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Lee Harding

NEW RIVERWORLD NOVEL
The Fabulous Riverboat

Edw<

The sardonic tale of organized crime’s biggest
job ever— hijacking the first starship. The sun’s
going nova, and the Syndicate isn’t about to
sit back and burn— so . . . instant Mafias tronauts!

Beagle has now published both volumes of SPECIAL
WONDER, the Anthony Boucher Memorial
Anthology of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
in paperback. Great stories by everyone from A
Anderson to Zelazny. We’ll be putting them in a A
nice boxed set for Christmas, but why wait? A I

Lovecraft Lovers!

Beagle’s Arkham Edition of H. P. Lovecraft is now
up to six titles: THE TOMB,

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF flfl

MADNESS, THE LURKING FEAR,ljB5

THE LURKER AT THE f .

THRESHOLD, THE SHUTTERED I
ROOM, and TALES OF THE
CTHULHU MYTHOS, vol. 1.

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WORLDS OF

SCIENCE

FICTION

May-Jun«, 1971
Vol.20, No. 11
Itsuo 1 54

ALL NEW
STORIES

Ejler Jakobsson, Editor Lester del Rey, Feature Editor

Judy-Lynn Benjamin, Managing Editor Front L. Roggeri, Art Director

Jay Tunick, Circulation Director LX. Murphy, Subscription Director

Jack Gaughan, Associate Art Director

NOVELETTE

EASY WAY OUT, John Brunner 82

SERIAL (Parti)

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT, Philip Jos6 Farmer 4

SHORT STORIES

BATTLEGROUND, Greg and Jim Benford 69

THE RIGHT TO REVOLT, Keith Laumer 116

THE RIGHT TO RESIST, Keith Laumer 117

FALLEN SPACEMAN, Lee Harding 152

FEATURES

READING ROOM, Lester del Rey 2

SF CALENDAR 81

HUE AND CRY: Readers Write— and Wrong 174

Cover by GAUGHAN, suggested by FALLEN SPACEMAN

Arnold E. Abramson, Publisher Bernard Williams, Associate Publisher

IF is published bimonthly by UPD Publishing Corporation, a subsidiary of Universal Publishing A Dis-
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%ese mat minds w

Isaac Newton

THIS BOOK FR

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How does anyone — man or woman — achieve
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Know the mysterious world within you ! Attune
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and powers of mind.

It would be named the Not For
Hire. No one would ever be able to
take it away from him, it would be
so strongly armored and weapon-
ed. Nor would anyone be able to
buy or rent it from him. It would be
Not For Hire.

The name glowed in great black
letters against the white hull. NOT
FOR HIRE.

The fabulous Riverboat would
have four decks, the boiler deck,
the main deck, the hurricane deck
and the landing deck for the aer-
ial machine. Its overall length
would be four hundred and forty
feet and six inches. The beam over
the paddle-wheel guards would be
ninety-three feet. Mean draft,
loaded, twelve feet. The hull would
be made of magnalium or, per-
haps, plastic. The great stacks
would spout smoke now and then,
because there was a steam boiler
aboard. But this was only to pro-
pel the big plastic bullets for the
steam machine guns. The giant
paddlewheels on the sides of the
Riverboat would be turned by
enormous electrical motors.

The Not For Hire would be the
only metal boat on The River, the
only boat not propelled by oars or
wind, and it would make anybody
sit up and stare, whether he was
born in 2,000,000 B.C. or in 2000
A.D.

And he, Sam Clemens, would be
The Captain, Capital T, capital
C, because, aboard this vessel.

carrying a crew of one hundred
and twenty, there would be only
one Captain.

King John of England could call
himself Admiral if he wished,
though if Sam Clemens had any-
thing to do with it, he’d be First
Mate, not Admiral. And if Sam
Clemens really had anything to
do with it King John — John Lack-
land, Rotten John, Dirty John,
Lecher John, Pigsty John — would
not even be allowed on the boat.
Sam Clemens, smoking a big
green cigar, wearing a white cap,
dressed in a white kilt with a white
towel over his shoulders for a
cape, would lean out of the star-
board port of the great pilothouse
and yell, Avast there , you lubbers!
Grab hold of that putrescent mass
of immorality and treachery
and toss him off the gangplank. I
don't care if he lands in The River
or on the bank ! Get rid of that hu-
man garbage!

Over the railing of the boiler
deck Prince John would sail. Sly-
boots John, screaming, cursing in
his French-accented Middle Eng-
lish or in Anglo-Norman French
or in Esperanto. Then the gang-
plank would be drawn up, bells
would ring, whistles would blow
and Sam Clemens, standing be-
hind the pilot, would give the or-
der to begin the voyage.

The voyage! Up a River for
maybe ten million miles, or may-
be twenty million miles, for may-

be forty years or a hundred years.
Such a Riverboat, such a River,
such a voyage had never been
dreamed of on Earth, long dead
Earth! Up The River, the only one
on this world, on the only boat like
this, with Sam Clemens as La
§ipestro , The Captain, and also
addressed as La Estro , The Boss.

He was so happy!

And then, as they headed out to-
ward the middle of The River, just
to test the current, which was
strongest in the center of the
mighty stream, as the thousands
along the bank waved and cheered
or wept after the boat, after him,
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias
Mark Twain— The Captain, The
Boss — he saw a man with long yel-
low hair and broad shoulders push-
ing through the crowd.

THE man wore a towel-like
cloth, secured by magnetic tabs
under the material, as a kilt. His
leather sandals were made of the
hide of the whale-sized riverdragon
fish. Around his thickly muscled
neck he wore a string of brilliantly
colored hornfish vertebrae. In his
huge powerful hand he gripped
the wooden shaft of a large war-
axe of iron. His pale blue eyes were
fixed on Samuel Clemens and that
broad hawk-nosed face was grim.

Sam Clemens screamed to the
pilot. Faster! Faster ! Full speed
ahead!

The great paddlewheels began

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

to dig into the water more swift-
ly— Chunk-chunk . Even through
the fiberglas-insulated deck, the
vibrations made the deck quiver.
Suddenly the blond man, Erik
Bloodaxe, tenth-century Viking
King, was in the pilothouse.

He shouted at Sam Clemens in
Old Norse, Traitor! Droppings of
Ratatosk! I told you / would wait
along the banks of The River! You
betrayed me so you could get the
iron from the fallen star and build
your great Riverboat!

Sam fled the pilothouse and
down the ladders from deck to deck
and down into the dark bowels of
the hold, but Erik Bloodaxe was al-
ways two steps behind.

Past the colossal rotating electric
motors Sam Clemens ran and then
he was in the chemistry room,
where the engineers were making
potassium nitrate from human
excrement and mixing it with
sulfur and charcoal to make gun-
powder. Sam grabbed hold of a
lighter and a resin torch, pressed
the slide and a white-hot glowing
wire slid out of the case.

Stop , or Til blow up the whole
boat! Sam screamed.

Erik had stopped, but he was
swinging the big axe around and
around over his head. He grinned
and said. Go ahead! You haven t
got the guts! You love the River-
boat more than you love anything ,
even your faithless but precious
Livy! You wouldnt blow her up!

So Tm going to split you down the
middle with my axe and then take
the Riverboat for myself!

No! No! Sam screamed. You
wouldnt dare! You cant! You
cant ! This is my dream , my love ,
my passion , my life , my world!
You cant.

The Norseman stepped closer to
him; the axe whistled over his head.

I can't? Just stand there and see!

Over his shoulder Sam saw a
shadow. It moved forward and be-
came a tall, faceless figure. It was
X, the Mysterious Stranger, the
renegade Ethical who had sent the
meteorite crashing into the River-
valley so that Sam could have iron
and nickel to build his Riverboat
on this mineral-poor planet. And
so he could sail up The River to the
North Polar Sea where the Misty
Tower, the Big Grail, call it what
you would, was hidden in the cold
fog. And there Sam, with the
eleven men chosen by X for his as
yet unrevealed plan, would storm
the Tower and find — find what?

Stranger! Sam called. Save me!
Save me!

The laughter was like a wind
from the polar sea, turning his en-
trails to crystal.

Save yourself , Sam! the
Stranger said.

No! No! You promised ! Sam
yelled. And then his eyes were open
and the last of his groans died
away. Or had he dreamed that he
was groaning?

HE SAT up. His bed was made
of bamboo. The mattress was a
bamboo fiber cloth stuffed with
giant leaves of the irontree. The
blanket was made up of five towels
secured together by magnetic
tabs. The bed was against the wall
of a room twenty feet square. It
held a desk and a round table and
about a dozen chairs, all of bam-
boo or pine, and a fired-clay cham-
ber pot. There were also a bamboo
bucket half-full with water, a tall
broad case with many pigeonholes
for rolls of paper, a rack with
bamboo and pine spears with flint
and iron tips, yew bows and ar-
rows, a waraxe of nickel-iron and
four long steel knives. On the wall
were a number of pegs from which
white towels hung. On one hat-
stand was a naval cap, an officer's,
made of leather covered with a
thin white cloth.

On the table was his grail, a
gray metallic cylinder with a me-
tal handle.

On the desk were glass bottles
containing a soot-black ink, a
number of bone pens and one
nickel-iron pen. The papers on the
desk were of bamboo, though
there were a few sheets of vellum
from the inner lining of the
stomach of the hornfish.

Glass windows (or ports, as he
called them) looked out all
around the room and, as far as
Sam Clemens knew, this was the
only house with glass windows in

the entire Rivervalley. Certain-
ly, it was the only one for 10,000
miles either way from this area.

The sole light came from the
sky. Though it was not yet dawn,
the light was a trifle brighter than
that cast by the full moon on Earth.
Giant stars of many colors, some
so big they looked like chipped-
off pieces of the moon, jampacked
the heavens. Bright sheets and
streamers hung between the stars,
behind them, and even, seeming-
ly, in front of some of the bright-
est. These were cosmic gas clouds,
the like of which had never been
seen by the unaided eye on Earth.
The stars and the clouds made a
glory that never ceased to thrill the
more sensitive of the humanity
along The River.

Sam Clemens, smacking his lips
at the sour taste of the liquor he
had drunk that evening and the
even sourer taste of the dream,
stumbled across the floor. He
opened his eyes completely when
he reached the desk, picked up a
lighter and applied the extended
hot wire to a stone bracket, where
the smoke went out through an
opening at the junction of ceiling
and wall.

He opened a port and looked out
toward The River. A year ago he
would have seen only a flat plain
about a mile and a half wide and
covered with short, tough, bright-
green grass. Now it was a hideous
mass of piled-up earth, deep pits

and many buildings of bamboo
and pine containing brick furn-
aces. These were his steel mills (so-
called), his glass factory, his
smelters, his cement mills, his
forges, his blacksmith shops, his
armories, his laboratories and
his nitric- and sulfuric-acid fac-
tories. A half a mile away was a
high wall of pine logs enclosing
the first metal boat he would build.

Torches flared to his left. Even
at night the men were digging out
the siderite chunks, hauling up
pieces of the nickel-iron.

Behind him had been a forest of
thousand-foot irontrees, red pine,
lodgepole pine, black oak, white
oak, yew trees and thick stands of
bamboo. These had stood on the
foothills; the hills were mostly
still there but the trees, except for
the irontrees, were all gone, along
with the bamboo. Only the huge
irontrees had withstood the steel
axes of Clemens' people. The tall
grasses had been cut down and
their fibers chemically treated to
make ropes and paper, but their
roots were so tough and so tangled,
that there had not been enough rea-
son to chop through them. The la-
bor and the materials used in
chopping through the roots of the
short grass of the plains to get to
the metal there had been very ex-
pensive. Not in terms of money,
because that did not exist, but in
terms of sweat, worn-out stone and
then dulled steel.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

Where this area had been beauti-
ful with its many trees and bright
grass and the colored blooms of
the vines that covered the trees, it
was now like a battlefield. It had
been necessary to create ugliness
to build the beautiful boat.

WHOEVER had made this
world had planned well.
There was not much erosion, even
though man had stripped the land
of all the vegetation he could. The
iron-trees, occupying twenty out of
every one hundred square feet of
the foothills, stood firm. Nor
could the roots of any of the plants
be killed; they were so deeply
buried.

Sam shivered at the wet and
chilly wind which always came late
at night from upRiver. He shivered
also at the thought of the desola-
tion. He loved beauty and nature's
order and he loved the parklike ar-
rangement of the valley, whatever
else he thought about this world.
Now he had made it hideous be-
cause he had a dream. And he
would have to extend that hideous-
ness, because his mills and factor-
ies needed more wood for fuel, for
paper, for charcoal. All that his
state had was used up ajid he had
about used up all that Cernskujo
to the immediate north and Pub-
liujo to the immediate south,
would trade him. If he wanted
more he would have to war on his
closest neighbors or make arrange-

ments for trading with the more
distant states or those just across
The River. Or else conquer them
and take their wood away from
them. He did not want to do that;
he abhorred war in principle and
could barely stand it in practice.

But if he was to have his River-
boat he had to have wood as fuel
for his factories.

He also had to have bauxite and
cryolite and platinum if he was to
have aluminum generators and
motors.

The nearest source of all three
was in Soul City, that nation
twenty-six miles downRiver dom-
inated by Elwood Hacking, who
hates whites.

So far, Sam had been able to
trade iron weapons for bauxite,
cryolite, cinnabar and platinum.
Sam's own state, Parolando, need-
ed the weapons badly. Adding one
burden to the other. Hacking in-
sisted that Parolando use its own
men to mine and transport the ore.

Sam sighed deeply. Why in hell
hadn't the Mysterious Stranger
directed the meteorite to fall right
by the bauxite deposits? Then,
when Sam and Bloodaxe's Vik-
ings had sailed into this area im-
mediately after the meteorite
had struck, they could have
claimed the land that was now Soul
City for their own. When Hacking
arrived, he would have been forced
to join Clemens or to leave.

Still, even with the Stranger's

powers, it could not be easy to de-
flect a hundred-thousand-ton,
iron-nickel siderite from its course
and make it fall only twenty-six
miles from the bauxite and other
minerals. Actually the Stranger
had supposed that he had hit the
target on the bull’s-eye. He had
told Sam, before he disappeared
on some unknown mission, that
the minerals were upRiver, all
within a seven-mile range. But he
had been mistaken. And that had
made Sam both glad and angry. He
was angry because the minerals
were not all within his reach, but
he was also happy that the Ethi-
cals could make a mistake.

The Stranger called his people
the Ethicals. It was they who re-
surrected the entire human
species and all subhumans intel-
ligent enough to have a language.
The Resurrection had been ac-
complished by purely scientific
means. The supernatural had
played no part in raising— or re-
creating— the dead. All who had
died between 2,000,000 B.C. and
2008 A.D. had been resurrected.
The only exceptions were idiots
and those who had died before the
age of five. The Ethicals had re-
stored everyone whole and in ex-
cellent health, but sterile. They
had rejuvenated those who need-
ed it. And now, twenty-one years
after the first day of resurrec-
tion, all looked as if they were no
more than twenty-five years old.

But, despite the godlike power
of the Ethicals, they could make
mistakes and errors.

That fact did not help the hu-
mans imprisoned forever be-
tween sheer mountains 20,000 feet
high in a valley about 9.9 miles
wide on the average. They would
be imprisoned for thousands of
years, if not forever, unless
Samuel Langhorne Clemens could
build his Riverboat.

SAM went to the unpainted pine
cabinet, opened a door, and
pulled out an opaque glass bottle.
It held about twenty ounces of
bourbon donated by people who
did not drink. He downed about
three ounces, winced, "snorted,
slapped his chest and put the bottle
back. Hah! Nothing better to start
off the day with, especially when
you woke up from a nightmare
that should have been rejected by
the Great Censor of Dreams. If,
that is, the Great Censor had any
love and regard for one of his fa-
vorite dream-makers, Sam Clem-
ens. Maybe the Great Censor did
not love him after all. It seemed
that very few did love Sam any
more. He had to do things he did
not want to do in order to get the
boat built.

And then there was Livy, his
wife on Earth for thirty-four years.

He swore, caressed a nonexis-
tent moustache, reached back into
the cabinet and pulled the bottle

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

out again. Another snort. Tears
came, but whether engendered by
the bourbon or the thought of Livy,
he did not know. Probably, in this
world of complex forces and mys-
terious operations — and opera-
tors— the tears were caused by
both. Plus other things which his
hindbrain did not care to let him
peep into at this moment. His
hindbrain would wait until his
forebrain was bent over, tying its
intellectual shoestrings, and
would then boot the posterior of
said forebrain.

He strode across the bamboo
mats and looked through the port
window. Down there, about two
hundred yards away, under the
branches of the thousand-foot
irontree, was a round, conical-
roofed, two-room hut. Inside the
bedroom would be Olivia Lang-
don Clemens, his wife — his ex-
wife— and the long, lanky, tremen-
dously beaked, weak-chinned
Savinien de Cyrano II de Berge-
rac, swordsman, libertine and
man-of-letters.

“Livy, how could you?" Sam
said. “How could you break my
heart, the heart of Your Youth ?"

A year had passed since she had
shown up with Cyrano de Berge-
rac. He had been shocked, more
shocked than he had ever been in
his seventy-four years on Earth and
his twenty-one years on the River-
world. But he had recovered from
it. Or he would have recovered if

he had not gotten another shock,
though a lesser one. Nothing could
exceed the impact of the first.
After all, he could not expect Livy
to go without a man for twenty-
one years. Not when she was young
and beautiful again and still
passionate and had no reasonable
hope of ever seeing him again. He
had lived with a half-dozen women
himself, and he could not expect
chastity or faithfulness from her.
But he had expected that she
would drop her mate like a monkey
drops a heated penny when she
found him again.

Not so. She loved de Bergerac.

He had seen her almost every
day since the night she had first
come out of the mists of The River.
They spoke politely enough and
sometimes, when the atmosphere
seemed just right, they cracked
their reserve and laughed and joked
just as they had on. Earth. Some-
times, briefly, but undeniably,
their eyes told each other that the
old love was vibrating between
them. Then, when he felt that he
had broken out with longing, just
like the hives, so he told himself
later, laughing while he felt like
crying, he had stepped toward
her, despite himself, and she had
stepped back to Cyrano’s side if he
happened to be there or looked
around for him if he wasn’t.

Every night she was with that
dirty, uncouth, big-nosed, weak-
chinned, Adam's-appled, but

colorful, strong-minded, witty,
vigorous, talented, scary French-
man. The virile frog, Sam mut-
tered. He could imagine him leap-
ing, croaking with lust, toward
the white, blackly outlined,
curving figure of Livy, leaping,
croaking . . .

He shuddered. This was no good.
Even when he brought women up
here secretly — though he did not
have to hide anything — he- could
not quite forget her. Even when he
chewed dreamgum he could not
forget her. If anything, she sailed
into the drug-tossed sea of his
mind more strongly, blown by the
winds of desire. The good ship
Livy , white sails bellying out, the
trim cleancut curving hull . . .

And he heard her laughter, that
lovely laughter. That seemed to be
the hardest thing to endure.

He walked away and looked out
through the fore ports. He stood by
the oak pedestal and the big-
spoked riverboat’s wheel he had
carved. This room was his “pilot-
house” and the two rooms behind
made up the “texas.” The whole
building was on the side of the hill
nearest to the plain. It was on
thirty-foot stilts and could be
entered through a staircase or
ladder (to use a nautical term) on
the starboard side or through a
port directly from the hill behind
the rear chamber of the texas. On
top of the pilothouse was a large
bell, the only metal bell in the

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

world, as far as he knew. As soon
as the waterclock in the corner
struck six, he would clang the big
bell. And the dark valley would
slowly come to life.

MISTS still overhung The
River and the edge of the
banks, but he could see the huge
squat mushroom shape of the
grailstone a mile and a half down
the slope of the plain just by the
water’s edge. A moment later, he
saw a boat, toy size, emerge from
the mists. Two figures jumped out
and pulled the dugout onto the
shore, then ran off to the right. The
light from the skies was bright
enough for Sam to see them,
though he sometimes lost them
when buildings intervened. After
going around the two-story pottery
factory they cut straight into the
hills. He lost them then but it
seemed that they were heading for
John Plantegenet’s log “palace.”

So much for the sentinel system
of Parolando. Every quarter mile
on The River’s front was guarded
by a hut on thirty-foot stilts with
four men on duty. If they saw any-
thing suspicious, they were to beat
on their drums, blow their bone
horns and light their torches.

Two men slipping out of the fog
to carry news to King John, ex-
King John, of England?

Fifteen minutes later Sam saw a

shadow running between shadows.
The rope attached to the small bell
just inside the entrance rang. He
looked through the starboard
port. A white face looked up at
him. Sam’s own spy, William
Grevel, famous wool merchant,
citizen of London, died in 1401 in
the Year Of Our Lord. There were
no sheep or, in fact, any mammals
other than man along The River.
But the ex-merchant had shown
great aptitude for espionage, and
he loved to stay up all night and
skulk around.

Sam beckoned to him; Grevel
ran up the “ladder” and entered
after Sam had unbarred the thick
oak door.

Sam said, in Esperanto, “ Salu -
ton, leutenanto G revel. Kio

estas?**

(Translation: “Hello, Lieutenant
Grevel. What’s the matter?”)

Grevel said, “ Bonan matenon ,
Estro. Ciu grasa fripono, Rego
Johano, estas jus akceptita duo
spionoj. **

(Translation: “Good morning.
Boss. That fat rascal. King John,
has just received two spies.”)

Neither Sam nor Grevel could
understand each other’s English,
but they got along very well in Es-
peranto, except now and then.

Sam grinned. Bill Grevel had let
himself down from the limb of an
irontree, passing directly over a
sentry, and down a rope onto the
edge of the roof of the two-story

building. He had passed through
the bedroom, where three women
slept, and then crawled to the top
of the staircase. John and his
spies, a twentieth-century Italian
and a sixth-century Hungarian,
were at a table below Grevel. The
two had reported the results of
their trip upRiver. John was fur-
ious and justly so, from his view-
point.

Sam, hearing Grevel’s report, al-
so became furious.

“He tried to assassinate Arthur
of New Brittany? What is that man
trying to do, ruin all of us?”

He paced back and forth, stop-
ped, lit a big cigar and began pac-
ing again. Once he stopped to in-
vite Grevel to a bite of cheese and a
glass of wine.

It was one of the ironies of
Chance or, perhaps, of the Ethi-
cals, for who knew what things
they arranged, that King John of
England and the nephew he had
murdered most foully should have
been located within thirty-two
miles of each other. Arthur,
Prince of Brittany of dead Earth,
had organized the peoples among
whom he found himself into a
state he called New Brittany.
There were very few old Bretons in
the ten-mile long territory he
ruled, but that did not matter. New
Brittany it was.

It had taken eight months be-
fore Arthur had discovered that his
uncle was his neighbor. He had

traveled incognito to Parolando
to verify with his own eyes the
identity of John, the uncle who had
slit his throat and dropped his
weighted body into the Seine.
Arthur wanted to capture John
and keep him alive for as long as
possible under exquisite torture.
Killing John would only bar him,
possibly forever, from getting his
revenge. John, murdered, would
awake the next day some place
thousands of miles away on The
River.

But Arthur had sent emissaries
demanding that John be given up
to him. These demands had been
rejected, of course, though only
Sam’s sense of honor and his fear
of John, kept him from agreeing
to Arthur's demands.

Now John had sent four men to
assassinate Arthur. Two had been
killed; the others had escaped with
minor wounds. This would mean
invasion. Arthur not only had
wanted revenge on John, he would
like to get possession of the
meteorite iron.

'DETWEEN Parolando and New
-■-^Brittany, a fourteen-mile
stretch of the right bank of The
River was known as Chernsky's
Land, or in Esperanto, ternskujo .
Chernsky, a sixteenth-century
Ukrainian cavalry colonel, had re-
fused an alliance with Arthur. But
the nation immediately to New
Brittany's north was governed by

Iyeyasu. He was a powerful and
ambitious person, the man who
had established the Tokugawa
Shogunate in 1600 with its capital
at Yedo, later called Tokyo. Sam’s
spies said that the Japanese and
the Breton had met six times.

Moreover, just to the north of
lyeyasujo was Kleomanujo. This
was governed by Cleomenes, a king
of Sparta and half-brother to that
Leonidas who held the pass at
Thermoplyae. Cleomenes had
met three times with Iyeyasu and
Arthur.

Just south of Parolando was an
eleven-mile stretch called Publia,
after its king, Publius Crassus.
Publius had been an officer in
Caesar's cavalry during the Gallic
campaigns. He was inclined to be
friendly, although he extracted a
big price for letting Sam cut down
his timber.

South of Publia was Tifonujo,
ruled by Tai Fung, one of Kublai
Khan's captains, killed on Earth
when he fell drunk off a horse.

And south of Tifonujo was Soul
City, headed by El wood Hacking
and Milton Firebrass.

Sam stopped and glared from
under bushy brows at Grevel. “The
hell of it. Bill, is there isn’t much I
can do. If I tell John 1 know about
his trying to murder Arthur, who
may deserve murder, for all I
know, then John knows that I've
got spies inside the house. And
he'll just deny everything, ask that

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

I bring his accusers forth — and you
know what would happen to them,
to you."

Grevel paled.

Sam said, “Start your blood
running again. I won’t do it. No.
The only thing to do is to keep
quiet and watch for developments.
But I’m choking up to here with
keeping quiet. That man is the
most despicable I ever met— and if
you knew my vast range of ac-
quaintances, including pub-
lishers, you would feel the depth of
my words.”

“John could be a tax-collector,”
Grevel said, as if he had plumbed
the depths of insult. And he had,
for him.

“It was a bad day-when I had to
agree* to take John on as a part-
ner,” Sam muttered, blowing
out smoke as he turned toward
Grevel. “But if I hadn’t taken him
in, I’d have been robbed of my
chance at the iron.”

HE DISMISSED Grevel after
thanking him. The skies just
above the mountains across The
River were paling. Soon the entire
vault would be rosy on the edges
and blue above, but it would be
some time before the sun cleared
the mountain. Before then, the
grailstones would be discharging.

He washed his face in a basin,
combed his thick bush of reddish
hair straight back, applied the
toothpaste with the tip of his

finger to his teeth and gums, and
spat. Then he fastened a belt with
four sheaths and a bag dangling
from a strap and put it around his
waist. He placed a long towel
around his shoulders as a cape,
picked up a cane of oak shod with
iron and, with the other hand,
picked up the grail. He went down
the stairs. The grass was still wet.
It rained every night at three
o'clock for a half-hour and the val-
ley did not dry until after the sun
came up. If it were not for the
absence of disease germs and
viruses, half the valley’s humans
would have died of pneumonia and
flu long ago.

Sam was young and vigorous
again, but he still did not like to
exercise.. As he walked, he thought
of the little railway he would like
to build from his house to the edge
of The River. But that would be too
restrictive. Why not build an auto-
mobile with a motor that burned
wood alcohol?

People began joining him; he
was kept busy with “ Saluton /”
and “ Bonan Matenon!” At the end
of his walk, he gave his grail to a
man to put on a depression on the
top of the gray granite mushroom-
shaped rock. About six hundred of
the gray cylinders were placed in
the depression and the crowd re-
treated to a respectful distance.
Fifteen minutes later, the rock
erupted with a roar. Blue flames
soared twenty-five feet high and

thunder echoed from the moun-
tain. The appointed grail keepers
for the day got onto the rock and
passed the cylinders around. Sam
took his back to the pilothouse,
wondering on the way why he did
not delegate someone to carry his
grail down for him. The truth was,
a man was so dependent on the
grail, he just could not trust it out
of his sight.

Back in the house, he opened the
lid. In six containers in snapdown
racks were breakfast and various
goodies.

The grail had a false bottom in
which were concealed an energy-
matter converter and programed
menus. This morning he got bacon
and eggs, toast with butter and
jam, a glass of milk, a slice of
cantaloupe, ten cigarettes, a
marihuana stick, a cube of dream-
gum, a cigar and a cup of some de-
licious liqueur.

He settled down to eat with
gusto and got, instead, a bad taste.
Looking out through the star-
board port (so he wouldn't see into
Cyrano’s door), he saw a youth on
his knees before his hut. The fel-
low was praying, his eyes closed,
his hands church-steepled. He wore
only a kilt and a spiral bone from
a Riverfish suspended by a
leather string around his neck. His
hair was dark blond, his face was
broad and his body was muscular.
But his ribs were beginning to
show.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

The praying man was Hermann
Goering, a missionary of the
Church of the Second Chance.

Sam swore and reared up from
his chair, knocking it backward,
picked it up and moved his break-
fast from his desk to the big round
table in the center of the room. The
fellow had spoiled his appetite
more than once. If there was one
thing Sam could not stand, it was
an ex-sinner, and Hermann
Goering had sinned more than
most and was now, by way of
compensation, holier than most.
Or so it seemed to Sam, though
Goering claimed that he was the
lowliest of the low — in a sense.

Take your damned arrogant
humility away, Sam had said. Or
at least take it downwind . . .

If it had not been for the Mag-
na Carta which Sam had drawn
up (over King John’s protests,
thus repeating history), Sam
would have kicked Goering and
his followers out long ago. Well,
at least a week ago. But the Carta,
the constitution of the state of
Parolando, the most democratic
constitution in the history of
mankind, gave total religious
freedom and total freedom of
speech. Almost total, anyway.
There had to be some limitations.

But his own document forbade
Sam to stop the missionaries of the
Church of the Second Chance from
preaching.

Yet if Goering continued to pro-

test, to make speeches, to convert
more to his doctrine of pacifist
resistance Sam Clemens would
never get his Riverboat. Her-
mann Goering had made a symbol
of the boat; he said that it
represented man's vanity, greed,
lust for violence and disregard of
the Creator’s designs for the world
of man.

Man should not build river-
boats, he should built more stately
mansions of the soul. All man
needed now was a roof over his
head to keep off the rain and thin
walls for a little privacy now and
then. Man no longer had to earn
his bread by the sweat of his brow.
His food and.drink were given to
him with nothing expected in re-
turn, not even gratitude. Man had
time to determine his destiny. But
man must not transgress on oth-
ers, not rob them of their posses-
sions, their love or their dignity. He
must respect others and himself.
But he could not do this through
delivery, robbery, violence, con-
tempt. He must . . .

SAM turned away. Goering had
some fine sentiments to which
Sam subscribed. But Goering was
wrong if he thought that licking
the boots of the people who had
put them here was going to lead to
any Utopia or salvation for their
souls. Humanity had been tricked
again; it was being used, misused
and abused. Everything, the

resurrection, the rejuvenation,
freedom from disease, free food
and liquor and smokes, freedom
from hard work or economic neces-
sity, everything was an illusion, a
candy bar to lead baby mankind
into some dark alley
where . . . Where what? Sam did
not know. But The Mysterious
Stranger had said that mankind
was being tricked in the crudest
hoax of all, even crueler than the
first hoax, that of life on Earth.
Man had been resurrected and put
on this planet as the subject of a
tremendous scholarly study. That
was all. And when the studies were
completed Man would go down in-
to darkness and oblivion once
more. Cheated again.

But what did the Stranger have
to gain by telling this to certain-
selected men? Why had he chosen a
small number to help him defeat
his fellow Ethicals? What was the
Stranger really after? Was he ly-
ing to Sam and Cyrano and
Odysseus and the others whom
Sam had not yet met?

Sam Clemens did not know. He
was as much in The Great Dark as
he had been on Earth. But he did
know one thing for certain. He
wanted that Riverboat.

The mists had cleared away;
breakfast time was over. He
checked the water clock and then
rang the big bell on the pilothouse.
As soon as it had ceased tolling the
wooden whistles of the sergeants

began shrilling. Up and down the
ten-mile stretch of the Rivervalley
known as Parolando the whistles
shrilled. Then the drums began to
beat and Parolando went to work.

Ill

THERE were 17,000 people in
the state and the Riverboat
would be taking only one hundred
and twenty. Twenty of these al-
ready knew for sure they would be
going. Sam and Joe Miller, Lo-
thar von Richthofen, Van Boom,
de Bergerac, Odysseus, three en-
gineers and King John and their
hutmates, had been promised.
The rest would know whether or
not they had worked for nothing a
few days before the boat sailed. At
that time, the names would be writ-
ten on slips of paper and placed in-
side a big wire cage. The cage
would be whirled around and
around, and then Sam would stop
it, and, blindfolded, would reach
in and pull out, one after the oth-
er, one hundred names. And these
lucky ones would be the crew of the
Not For Hire.

The Not For Hire had about
5,000,000 miles to travel, if The
Stranger could be believed. Aver-
aging about 335 miles every twen-
ty-four hours, it would take over
forty-one years to reach the end of
The River. But it would not aver-
age that much, of course. The crew
would have to put into shore for

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

extensive vacations on land and
there would be repairs to be made.
In fact, the Riverboat might wear
out, although Sam planned on
taking many spare parts. Once the
boat was on its way it could not put
back for parts or pick them up any-
where else. There would be no met-
al of any consequence from this
place on.

It was strange to think that he
would be about one hundred and
forty years old when he got to the
headwaters of The River.

But what was that when he had
thousands of years of youth to go?

He looked through the bow
ports. The plain was full of people
streaming down from the hills to
the factories. Behind him the hills
would be alive with others on their
way to the factories in the hills.
And a small army would be work-
ing on the big dam to the north-
west, near the base of the moun-
tains. A concrete wall was being
constructed between two steep
hills to dam up the water flowing
from a spring near the top of the
mountain. When the lake behind
the dam was full, its overflow
would be used to drive electrical
generators to power the mills.

At present the electrical energy
needed came from a grailstone. A
giant stepdown transformer of
aluminum took the energy three
times a day, sent it through brob-
dingnagian aluminum wires to a
two-story device known as the ba-

tacitor. This was a late twentieth-
century electronic discovery
that could accept hundreds of
kilovolts in a hundredth of a
microsecond and could dis-
charge it at any rate from a tenth of
a volt to one hundred kilovolts. It
was the prototype of the bataci-
tor that would be put on the River-
boat. At present the energy was
chiefly used in a cutting device
made by van Boom that sliced
through the pieces of nickel-iron
dug up on the plain — the energy
could also be moderated to melt
the metal. The aluminum for the
wires and the batacitor had been
laboriously and expensively made
from aluminum,, silicate derived
from the clay under the grass along
the base of the mountains. But that
supply had run out and now the
only economically feasible source
was in Soul City.

Sam sat down at his desk, pulled
out a drawer and removed a tall
book bound in fish-bladder leath-
er; the pages were bamboo-fiber
paper. It was his diary, The
Memoirs of a Lazarus . For the
time being he was using mk made
of water and tannic acid from oak
bark and carbon from finely
ground charcoal in suspension to
write down the day-by-day hap-
penings and his reflections.
When the technology of Parolan-
do was improved enough he would
use an electronic recorder that
van Boom had promised him.

He had no sooner started writ-
ing than the drums began beating.
The big bass drums represented
dashes; the small soprano drums,
dots. The code was Morse; the lan-
guage, Esperanto. Von Richthofen
would be landing soon.

SAM stood up to look out
again. A half a mile away was
the bamboo catamaran on which
Lothar von Richthofen had
sailed downRiver only ten days
ago. Through the starboard ports
Sam saw a squat figure with tawny
hair coming out of the gateway of
King John's log palace. Behind
him came bodyguards and syco-
phants.

King John was making sure that
von Richthofen did not give Sam
Clemens any secret messages
from Elwood Hacking.

The ex-monarch of England,
present co-ruler of Parolando,
wore a kilt with red and black
checks, a poncholike arrange-
ment of towels and knee-length,
red-leather Riverdragon boots.
Around his thick waist was a wide
belt with a number of sheaths con-
taining steel daggers, a short
sword and a steel axe. One hand
held a steel rod coronet, one of
many sources of contention be-
tween Sam and King John. Sam
did not want to waste metal on
such useless anachronisms, but
John had insisted and Sam had
given in.

Sam found some satisfaction in
thinking about the name of his lit-
tle nation. Parolando in Esperanto
meant pair land and was so called
because two men governed it. But
Sam had not mentioned to John
that another translation could be
Twain Land.

John followed a hard-dirt path
around a long, low factory build-
ing and then he was at the foot of
the staircase of Sam's quarters. A
bodyguard, a big thug named
Sharkey, pulled the bell rope and
the little bell tinkled.

Sam stuck his head out and
shouted, "‘Come aboard, John!”

John looked up at him from pale
blue eyes and motioned to
Sharkey to precede him. John was
cautious about assassins and he
had reason to be. He was also re-
sentful about having had to come
to Sam— but he had known that
von Richthofen would report to
Sam first.

Sharkey entered, inspected
Sam's pilothouse and looked
through the three rooms of the tex-
as. Sam heard a growl, as low and
powerful as a lion's, from the rear
bedroom. Sharkey came back
swiftly and closed the door.

Sam smiled and said, “Joe Mil-
ler may be sick, but he can still eat
ten Polish prizefighters for break-
fast and call for a second helping.”

Sharkey did not reply. He sig-
naled through the port that John
could come up.

the fabulous riverboat

The catamaran was beached now
and the tiny figure of von Richt-
hofen was coming across the
plain, holding his grail in one hand
and the wooden winged ambas-
sadorial staff in the other.
Through the other port Sam could
see the lanky figure of de Berger-
ac leading a platoon toward the
south wall. Livy was not in sight.

John entered. Sam said, “ Bonan
matenon, JohanoV ’

It galled John that Sam refused
to address him as Via Rega
Mosto — Your Majesty — in pri-
vate. La Konsulo — the Con-
sul— was their correct title and
even that came reluctantly from
Sam’s lips. Sam encouraged oth-
ers to call him La Estro> The Boss,
because that angered John even
more.

John grunted and sat down at the
round table. Another bodyguard,
a big dark proto-Mongolian with
massive bones and immensely
powerful muscles, Zaksksromb,
who presumably had died about
30,000 B.C., lit up a huge brown
cigar for John. Zak, as he was
known, was the strongest man in
Parolando, with the exception of
Joe Miller. And it could be argued
that Joe Miller was not a
man — or, at least, certainly not
homo sapiens.

SAM wished Joe would get out
of bed, because Zak made him
nervous. But Joe was sedating

himself with dreamgum. Two
days ago a chunk of siderite had
slipped from a crane’s tongs as Joe
was passing beneath it. The op-
erator swore it had been an acci-
dent, but Sam had his suspicions.
John would want to get rid of
Sam’s bodyguard, who was incor-
ruptible and who could scare off a
legion of assassins just .by boo-
ing at them.

Sam puffed on his cigar and
said, “Hear anything about your
nephew lately?”

John did not start, but his eyes
did widen a trifle. He looked at
Sam across the table.

“No, should 1?”

“1 just wondered. I’ve been
thinking about asking Arthur
down for a conference. There’s no
reason why you two should be try-
ing to kill each other. This isn't
Earth, you know. Why can’t we
call off old feuds? What if you did
drop him off in a sack into the
estuary? Let bygones be by-
gones. We could use his wood and
we need more limestone for calci-
um carbonate and magnesium.
He's got plenty.”

John glared, then hooded his
eyes and smiled.

Tricky John, Sam thought.
Smooth John. Despicable John.

“To get wood and limestone
we'd have to pay with steel arms,”
John said. “I’m not about to per-
mit my dear nephew to get his
hands on more steel.”

“Just thought I’d broach the
subject to you,” Sam said, “be-
cause at noon — ”

John stiffened. “Yes?”

“Well, I thought I’d bring up the
subject to the Council. We might
have a vote on it.”

John relaxed. “Oh?”

Sam thought. You think you’re
safe. You’ve got Pedro Ansurez
and Frederick Rolfe on your side
and a five-to-three vote in the
Council is a nay vote . .

Once again he contemplated sus-
pending the Magna Carta so that
things could be done that needed to
be done. But that might mean civil
war and that could mean the end of
the dream.

He paced back and forth while
John described in a loud voice and
sickening detail his latest con-
quest of his latest blonde. Sam
tried to ignore the words; he still
got mad because the man boasted,
although by now any woman who
accepted John had only herself to
blame.

THE little bell tinkled. Lothar
von Richthofen entered. He
was a well-built youth with long
blond hair and handsome, some-
what Slavic, features. He looked
like a less stocky and better look-
ing Goering. The two had known
each other well during World War
I, since both had served under Bar-
on Manfred won Richthofen, Lo-
thar’s older brother. Sam, of

course, having died in 1910, knew Sam felt faint. He leaned on the
about the Great War only by hear- table until things came back into
say, but Lothar had painted so focus. Then he said, "Til take a
many word pictures that Sam shot of Kentucky courage my-
thought he could visualize those self/*

days. Lothar was a wild, brash and Von Richthofen continued. “It
essentially likable person but seems that Hacking isn't too hap-
this morning his smiles and his py with the makeup of his state,
debonair bearing were gone. It's one-fourth Harlem blacks who

“What's the bad news?" Sam died between 1960 and 1980, you
said. know, and one-eighth eighteenth-

Lothar took the cup of bourbon century Dahomeyan blacks. But
that Sam offered, downed it and he has a nonblack population of
said, “Sinjoro Hacking has just one-fourth fourteenth-century
about finished putting up forti- Wahhabi Arabs, fanatics who
fications. Soul City has walls still claim that Mohammed is
twelve feet high and ten thick on all their prophet and they’re here just
fronts. Hacking was nasty to me, for a short trial period. Then
very nasty. He called me an ofejo there is the quarter that is thir-
and a honkio , words new to me. I teenth-century Asiatic Indian
did not care to ask him for an ex- Dravidian, black-skinned Cauca-
planation." sians, and one-eighth of people

“ Ofejo might be from the Eng- from anywhere and anytime. A
lish ofay,” Sam said, “but I never slight majority of these is twenti-
heard the other word. Honkio?” eth-century."

“You'll hear those words a lot in Sam nodded. Though the resur-
the future," Lothar said, “if you rected humanity consisted of per-
deal with Hacking. And you will, sons who lived from 2,000,000 B.C.
Hacking finally got down to busi- to 2008 A.D., one-fourth had been
ness after spewing out a torrent born after 1899 A. D.
of abuse, mostly about my Nazi “Hacking wants his Soul City to
ancestors. I never heard of the be almost entirely black. He said
Nazis on Earth, you know, since I that he had believed that integra-
died in a plane crash in 1922. He tion was possible when he lived on
seemed to be angry about some- Earth. The young whites of his day
thing— maybe his anger had noth- were free of the racial prejudices
ing to do with me originally. But of their elders and he had known
the essence of his speech was that hope. But there aren't too many of
he might cut off the bauxite and his former white contemporaries
other minerals." in his land. And the Wahhabi

the fabulous riverboat

Arabs are driving him out of his
mind. Hacking became a Mos-
lem on Earth, did you know that?
First he was a Black Muslim, an
American home-grown variety.
Then he became a real Moslem,
made a pilgrimage to Mecca and
was quite certain that the Arabs,
even if they were white, were not
racists.

“But the massacre of the
Sudanese blacks by the Sudanese
Arabs and the history of Arabic
enslavement of blacks disturbed
him. Anyway, these nineteenth-
century Wahhabi are not racists—
they’re just religious fanatics and
too much trouble. He didn’t say
so, but 1 was therejen days and I
saw enough. The Wahhabis want
to convert Soul City to their brand
of Moslemism and if they can't do
it peacefully, they’ll do it bloodily.
Hacking wants to get rid of them
and of the Dravidians, who seem to
regard themselves as superior.
Anyway, Hacking will continue to
furnish us bauxite if we will send
him all our black citizens in re-
turn for his Wahhabi and Dravidi-
an citizens. Plus an increased
amount of steel arms. Plus a
larger share in the raw siderite.”

Sam groaned. King John spat on
the floor. Sam scowled and said,
“ Merdo , Johano! Not even a
Plantagenet gobs on my floor!
Use the spittoon or get out!"

He forced himself to push down
his rage and frustration as King

John bristled. Now was not a time
to bring about a confrontation.
The vainglorious ex-monarch
would never back down on the
spitting issue, which was actually
trifling.

Sam gestured self-deprecating-
ly and said, “Forget about it,
John. Spit all you want to!’’ But he
could not resist adding: “As long
as I have the same privilege in your
house, of course.’’

JOHN growled and popped a
chocolate into his mouth. He
used the growling, grinding voice
that indicated that he, too, was
very angry but was imposing great
self-control.

“This Saracen, Hacking, gets
too much. I say we have kissed his
black hand long enough. His de-
mands have slowed down the build-
ing of the ship—’’

“Boat, John," Sam said. “It’s a
boat, not a ship."

“ Boato , smoato. I say, let us
conquer Soul City, put the citizens
to the sword and seize the min-
erals. Then we will be able to make
aluminum on the spot. In fact, we
could build the boat there. And, to
make sure that we are not inter-
fered with and have the wood
needed, we should conquer all the
states between us and Soul City."
Powermad John.

Yet, Sam was inclined to think
that he might, for once, be right. In
a month or so Parolando would

have the weapons that would en-
able it to do just what John was
proposing. Except that Publia
was friendly and their bills were
not high, and Tifonujo, though it
demanded much, had permitted
itself to be stripped of trees. It was
possible that both states planned
to use the nickel-iron they got for
their wood to make weapons so
that they could attack Parolando.

The savages across The River
were probably planning the same
thing.

“I’m not through," von
Richthofen said. '‘Hacking made
his demands about the trading of
citizens on a one-to-one basis. But
he won’t come to any agreement
unless we send a black to deal with
him. He says he was insulted when
you sent me, since I’m a Prussian
and a Junker to boot. But he’ll
overlook that, since we didn’t
know any better, if we send him a
member of the Council the next
time. One who’s black."

Sam’s cigar almost fell out.

"We don’t have a black Coun-
cilman."

"Exactly. What Hacking is say-
ing is that we had better elect one."

John passed both hands through
his shoulder-length tawny hair and
then stood up. His pale blue eyes
were fiery under the lion-colored
eyebrows.

"This Saracen thinks he can tell
us how to conduct our internal af-
fairs. I say, war!"

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

Sam said, "Now, just a minute.
Your Majesty. You have good rea-
son to be mad, as the old farmer
said — then fell in. But the truth
is, we can defend ourselves quite
well — but we cannot invade and
occupy any large territory."

"Occupy?" John shouted. "We
will slaughter half and chain the
other half!"

"The world changed much after
you died, John — uh. Your Majesty.
Admittedly there are other forms
of slavery than the outright form,
but I don’t want to get into an
argument about definitions.
There is no use making a fuss, as
the fox said to the hens. We just ap-
point another Councilman, pro
tern. And we send him to Hack-
ing."

"There is no provision in the
Magna Carta for a pro tem Coun-
cilman," Lothar said.

"We change the Carta," Sam
said.

"That’ll take a popular elec-
tion."

John snorted disgust. He and
Sam Clemens had gone through
too many blazing arguments
about the rights of the people.
Sam held firm on these points, and
Sam was La Estro , The Boss, to
the greatest number of citizens,
even if the two Consuls theoreti-
cally held equal powers.

"There’s one other thing,’’
Lothar said, still smiling but with
an exasperated note in his voice.

44 Hacking asks that Firebrass be
allowed to visit here for a tour of
inspection. Firebrass is especially
interested in seeing our airplane.”

JOHN sputtered. “He asks if we
care if he sends a spy!"

“I don't know," Sam said.
“Firebrass is Hacking's chief of
staff. He might get a different idea
of us. He’s an engineer— I think
he had a Ph.D., too, in physics. I've
heard about him. What did you
find out, Lothar?”

“He impressed me very much,"
von Richthofen said. "He was
bom in nineteen seventy-four in
Syracuse, New York. His father
was black and his mother was half -
Irish and half-Iroquois Indian.
He was in the second party to land
on Mars and the first to orbit
Jupiter—"

Sam was thinking, men really
did that. Landed on the Moon and
then Mars. Right out of Jules
Verne and Frank Reade, Jr. Fan-
tastic, yet no more fantastic than
this world. Or, indeed, than the
mundane world of 1910. None of
it could be explained in a manner
to satisfy any reasonable man. It
was all incredible.

“We'll put it up to the Council,
today, John," Sam said. “If you
have no objection. We'll have a
general election on the pro tern
Councilman. I personally favor
Uzziah Cawber."

“Cawber was a slave, wasn't

he?" Lothar said. “ I don't know.
Hacking said he didn't want any
Uncle Toms sent."

Once a slave , always a slave ,
Sam thought. Even when a slave
revolts , kills and is killed as a pro-
test against his slavery -resur-
rected, he still does not think of
himself as a free man . He was
born and raised in a world soaked
with the rotten essence of slave-
dom and every thought he thinks ,
every move he makes , is stained
with slavery , subtly altered with
slavery. Cawber was born in 1841
in Montgomery , Alabama. He was
taught to read and write. He served
in the house of his master as his
secretary. He killed his master's
son in 1863, escaped and went
West and became a cowboy , of all
tnings, and then a miner. He was
killed with a Sioux spear in 1876 ;
the ex-slave killed by a man about
to become a stave . Cawber is de-
lighted with this world — or claims
to be — because no man can en-
slave him here or keep him en-
slaved. But he is the slave of his
own mind and of the reactions of
his nerves. Even when he holds his
head high he will jump if some-
body cracks a whip and his head
will bow before he can stop it .. .

Why, oh, why, had man been
brought back to life? Men and
women were ruined by what had
happened on Earth and they
would never be able to undo the
damage. The Second Chancers

claimed a man could change, en-
tirely change. But the Second
Chancers were a pack of dream-
gummers.

“If Hacking calls Cawber an
Uncle Tom, Cawber will kill
him,” Sam said. “I say, let’s send
him.”

John’s tawny eyebrows rose.
Sam knew what he was thinking.
Perhaps he could use Cawber,
one way or another.

Sam looked at the waterclock.
“Time for the inspection tour.
Care to come along, John? I’ll be
with you in a minute,” and he sat
down at his desk to make a few
more entries in his diary.

That gave John the chance to
leave first, as befitted the ex-Kiftg
of England and a good part of
France. Sam thought it was ridicu-
lous to worry about who preceded
whom, yet he disliked John so
much he could not bear to let him
gain even this minor victory.
Rather than argue about it, or just
walk out ahead of him, and so
cause John to throw a fit, he pre-
tended he had work to do.

SAM caught up with the group,
which included the six Council-
men, just outside the nitric-acid
factory. They went through the
factories swiftly. The stinks
emanating from the nitric and sul-

furic acids, from the destructive
distillation of wood to make
alcohol, acetone, creosote, turpen-
tine and acetic acid, the for-
maldehyde vats and the treatment
of human excrement and lichen
scraped off the mountains to
extract potassium nitrate — these,
combined, were enough to make a
hyena lose its breakfast. They
were roasted and deafened in the
steel mill and the grinding mills
and the forges and blacksmith
shops. They were covered with a
white dust in the limestone mills
and magnesium factory. In the
aluminum factory they were again
roasted, deafened — and stunk out.

The gunsmith shop up in the hills
was not operating at the moment.
Except for distant noises, it was
quiet. But it was not beautiful. The
earth had been dug up, the trees cut
down and smoke from the fac-
tories up the River was black and
acrid along the mountains.

Van Boom, the late twentieth-
century, half Zulu, half Afrikaans
chief engineer, met them. He was
a handsome man with a dark
bronze skin and curly hair. He
stood about six-three and weighed
about two hundred and fifty. He
had been born in 1976 in a ditch
during The Bloody Years.

He greeted them cordially
enough (he liked Sam and toler-
ated John), but he did not smile as
usual.

“It’s ready,” he said, “but I

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

want my objections recorded. It's
a nice toy and makes a lot of noise
and looks impressive and will kill
a man. But it's wasteful and in-
efficient."

"You make it sound like a Con-
gressman," Sam said.

Van Boom led them into the high
doorway of the bamboo building,
where a steel handgun lay on a
table. Van Boom picked it up and
even in his big hand the gun was
huge. He strode past the others
and out into the light of the sun.
Sam was exasperated. He had
held out his hand for the gun and
the fellow had ignored him. If Van
Boom intended to demonstrate it
outside, why hadn’t he said so in
the first place?

"Engineers," Sam muttered.
Then he shrugged. You might as
well hit a Missouri mule between
the eyes with your pinkie as try to
change Van Boom’s ways.

Van Boom held up the gun so
that the sunshine twinkled against
the silvery gray metal. "This is the
Mark I pistol," he said. "Called so
because The Boss invented it."

Sam’s anger melted like ice in a
Mississippi River thaw.

"It’s a breech-loading, single-
shot, flintlock hand weapon with a
rifled barrel and a breakdown
action."

He held the gun in his right hand
and said, "You load it so. You
press forward the lock switch on
the left side of the barrel. This re-

leases the breech lock. You then
press down the barrel with the left
hand. This action forces the trig-
ger guard into the grip, where the
guard acts as a lever to cock the
hammer."

He reached into a bag strapped
to his belt and removed a large
brown hemispherical object.
"This is a bakelite or phenol-for-
maldehyde-resin bullet. It is sixty
caliber. You press the bullet, so,
until it engages the lands of the
barrel."

He removed from his bag a shiny
package with black contents.

"This is a charge of black gun-
powder wrapped in cellulose ni-
trate. Some time in the future^
we’ll have cordite instead of gun-
powder. If we use this gun, that is.
Now, I insert the load into the
chamber with the primer end first.
The primer is a twist of nitrate
paper impregnated with gun-
powder. Then I lift the barrel with
my left hand, thus, locking it into
place. The Mark I is now ready to
fire. But, for emergency, if the
primer does not ignite, you can
pour priming powder into the
touchhole just forward of the rear
sight. In case of misfire, the gun
may be cocked with the right
thumb. Note that this flash vent on
the right side of the action shield
protects the shooter’s face."

A MAN had brought out a large
wooden target and had inserted

it in a frame on four legs. The tar-
get was about twenty yards away.
Van Boom turned toward it, held
out the gun, clenched both hands
and sighted along the front and
rear sights.

“Get behind me, gentlemen,"
he said. "The heat of the passage
through the air will burn off the
surface of the bullet and leave a
thin trail of smoke which you may
be able to see. The plastic bullet
has to be of such large caliber be-
cause of its light weight. But this
increases the wind resistance. If
we decide to use this gun — which I
definitely am against — we might
increase the caliber to .75 in the
Mark II. The effective range is
about fifty yards, but the accuracy
is not good beyond thirty yards
and nothing to brag about within
that range."

The flint was in the hammer.
When Van Boom would pull the
trigger, the hammer would fall
and scrape along the file-like sur-
face of the frizzen. The frizzen cov-
ered the priming pan and should be
knocked forward by the flint, un-
covering the primer twist of the
powder charge.

There was a click as the sear let
the hammer go, a flash as the
primer twist burned —and a boom-
ing. The click-flash-boom took al-
most as long as it would take to say
each word and Van Boom had had
time between the click and the
boom to bring the gun back into

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

line after it had been jarred away
by the impact of the heavy ham-
mer and flint.

The bullet did leave a very faint
trail of smoke, quickly dissipated
by the fifteen-mile-an-hour wind.
Sam, looking past Van Boom's
arm, could see the bullet curve out
and then back, carried by the
wind. But Van Boom must have
been practicing, because the bullet
struck near the bull's eye. It went
halfway into the soft pine,
shattered and left a large hole in
the wood.

"The bullet won't penetrate
deeply into a man," Van Boom
said, "but it will leave a large hole.
And if it hits near bone, the frag-
ments should break the bone."

The next hour was spent busily
and happily with the Consuls and
Councilmen taking turns shooting.
King John was especially delighted,
though perhaps a little awed, be-
cause he had never seen a gun be-
fore. His first experience with gun-
powder had come several years
after he had been resurrected and
he had seen only bombs and wood-
en rockets.

At last Van Boom said, "If you
keep up, gentlemen, you will
exhaust our supply of bullets — and
it takes a lot of labor and materials
to make these bullets. Which is one
reason why I object to making
any more. My other reasons are:
one, the gun is accurate only at
close range; two, it takes so long to

load and shoot that a good bow-
man could drop three pistol
handlers while they’re loading and
stay outside the effective range of
the guns. Moreover, a plastic
bullet isn’t recoverable, whereas
an arrow is.”

Sam said, “That’s a lot of non-
sense! The mere fact that we would
have these guns would demon-
strate our technological and mili-
tary superiority. We’d scare the
enemy half to death before the
battle started. Also, you forget
that it takes a long time to train a
good bowman, but anyone can
shoot one of these after a rela-
tively short lesson.”

“True,” Van Boom said. “But
could they hit anyone? Besides, I
was thinking of making steel
crossbows. They can’t be handled
as fast as longbows, but they don’t
require any more training than
guns do and the bolts are recover-
able. And they’re a hell of a lot
more deadly than these noisy
stinking gadgets.”

“No sir,” Sam said. “No, sir. 1
insist that we make at least two
hundred of these. We’ll outfit a
new group, the Parolando Pisto-
leers. They’ll be the terror of The
River — you watch them; you’ll
see!”

FOR a change King John was
on Sam’s side. He stated that
the first two pistols should go to
Sam and to himself and the next

dozen to their bodyguards. Then
the new group could be organized
and trained.

Sam was grateful for the back-
ing, but he told himself to check on
the men who formed the Pis-
toleers. He did not want it made up
largely of men loyal to John.

Van Boom made no effort to
hide his disgust. “I’ll tell you
what. I’ll take a good yew bow and
twelve arrows and stand fifty yards
away. At a signal all eight of you
can advance on me, firing at will
with your Mark I’s— and I’ll drop
all eight of you before you get close
enough to hit me. Is it a deal? I’m
willing to lay my life on the line.”

“Don’t be childish,” Sam said.

Van Boom rolled his eyes up-
ward. “7’m childish? You're jeo-
pardizing Parolando — and your
boat — because you want guns to
play with!”

“Just as soon as the guns are
made you can start making all the
bows you want,’’ Sam said.
“Look! We’ll make armor, too, for
the Pistoleers! That should dis-
pose of your objections! Why
didn’t I think of that before? Why,
our men will be dressed up in steel
that’ll repel the Stone Age weap-
ons of the enemy as if they were
straws. Let the enemy shoot his
yew bows with his flint-tipped ar-
rows. They’ll bounce off the steel
and the Pistoleers can take their
time and blow the enemy into the
next county!”

“You forget that we’ve had to
barter our ore and even metal wea-
pons for wood and other materials
we need,” Van Boom said. “The
enemy will have arrows with steel
tips that can drive through armor.
Don’t forget Crecy and Agin-
court.”

“There’s just no dealing with
you,” Sam said. “You must be
half Dutch — you’re so stubborn.”

“If your thinking is representa-
tive of the thinking of white men,
then I’m glad I’m half Zulu,” Van
Boom said.

“Don’t get huffy,” Sam replied.
“Congratulations on the gun. Tell
you what, we'll call it the Van
Boom-Mark I. How’s that?”

“I’d just as soon not have my
name attached to it,” the engineer
said. “So be it. I’ll make your two
hundred guns. But I’d like to make
an improved version. You know,
the Mark II we talked about?”

“Let's make two hundred of
these first, then we’ll start on the
Mark II,” Sam said. “We don't
want to mess around so long try-
ing to get the perfect weapon that
we suddenly find we don't have any
at all. Still — ”

He talked for a while about the
Mark II. He had a passion for
mechanical gadgets. On Earth he
had invented a number of things,
all of which were going to make
him a fortune. And there was the
Paige typesetting machine, into
which he had sunk — and it had

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

sunk — all the wealth he had made
from his books.

Sam thought of the typesetting
monster and how that wonderful
contraption had bankrupted him.
For a second, Paige and Van
Boom were one and he felt guilty
and a little panicky.

VAN BOOM next complained
about the materials and the la-
bor put into the AM P-1, their aeri-
al machine prototype. Sam ig-
nored him. He went with the oth-
ers to the hangar, which was on the
plains about a mile north of Sam’s
quarters. The plains had been left
undisturbed in front of the bamboo
hangar so that the plane, when it
flew, would have a narrow landing
strip. The craft was only partly
finished but would look almost as
skeletal and frail when ready to fly
as it did now.

“It's similar to some of the
planes built in nineteen-ten,” von
Richthofen said. “I'll be exposed
from my waist up when I sit in the
cockpit. The whole machine looks
more like a metal dragonfly than
anything else. The main object is to
test out the efficiency of the wood-
alcohol-burning motor and our
materials.”

Von Richthofen promised that
the first flight would be made with-
in three weeks. He showed Sam the
plans for the rocket launchers
to be mounted under the wings.
“The plane can carry about six

rockets, but it’ll mostly be good
only for scouting. It won’t go fast-
er than forty miles an hour against
the wind. But it'll be fun flying it.”

Sam was disappointed that the
plane wasn’t a two-seater. He had
never flown. But von Richthofen
said the next prototype would be a
two-seater and Sam would be his
first passenger.

‘‘After you’ve tested it out,”
Sam said. He expected John to
protest about this and to insist that
he be taken up first. But evidently
John was not too eager to fly.

The last stop was at the boat-
yard, located halfway between the
hangar and Sam’s house. The craft
within the pine-log enclosure
would be completed within a week.
The Firedragon I was the amphi-
bious prototype of the boat that
would be the launch for the big
boat. It was a beautiful machine,
made of thick magnalium, about
thirty-two feet long, shaped like a
U.S. Navy cruiser with wheels,
with three turrets on its sleek top
deck. It was powered by steam,
burned wood alcohol, could oper-
ate in water or on land, carried a
crew of eleven and was, so Sam
declared, invincible.

He patted the cold gray hull and
said, “Why should we worry about
having bowmen? Or having
anything but this? This juggernaut
could crush a kingdom all by itself.
It has a steampowered cannon the
like of which the world. Earth or

this planet, has never seen. That is
why it is steamdriven and why it
has such a huge boiler.”

All in all, the tour had made him
happy. It was true that the plans
for the great Riverboat had barely
been started. But those took time.
It was vital that the state be well
protected at first, and just making
the preparations was fun. He
rubbed his hands and puffed on a
new cigar, drawing the green
smoke deeply into his lungs.

And then he saw Livy.

He beloved Livy, sick for so
many years, and dead, finally, in
Italy, in 1904.

Restored to life and youth and
beauty, but not, alas, to him.

SHE was walking toward him,
carrying her grail by its han-
dle, wearing a white, scarlet-edged
kilt that came halfway down her
thighs and a thin white scarf for a
bra. She had a fine figure, good
legs, handsome features. Her
forehead was broad and satiny
white. Her eyes were large and
luminous. Her lips were full and
shapely; her smile, attractive; her
teeth, small and very white. She
customarily wore her dark hair
parted, combed down smooth in
front but twisted into a figure
eight in the back. Behind an ear she
wore one of the giant crimson rose-
like blooms that grew from the
vines on the irontrees. Around her
neck was a necklace made of the

convoluted red vertebrae of the
hornfish.

Sam's heart felt as if it were
being licked by a cat.

She swayed as she walked to-
ward him and her breasts bounced
beneath the semiopaque fabric.
Here was his Livy, who had always
been so modest, had worn heavy
clothes from the neck down to the
ankle and had never undressed
before him in the light. Now she
reminded him of the half-naked
women of the Sandwich Islands
and he felt uneasy. He knew why.
His queasiness among the natives
had been as much due to their un-
wanted attraction for him as
repulsion, each feeling dependent
on the other and having nothing to
do with the natives.

Livy had had a puritanical up-
bringing but she had not been
ruined by it. On Earth she had
learned to drink and to like beer,
had even smoked a few times and
had become an infidel or, at least,
a great doubter. She had even
tolerated his constant swearing and
had let loose with a few blisterers
herself if the girls were not around.
The accusations that she had
censored his books and so emas-
culated them were off the target.
He had done most of the censoring
himself.

Yes, Livy had always shown
adaptability.

Too much. Now, after twenty
years of absence from him, she had

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

fallen in love with Cyrano de Ber-
gerac. And Sam had the uneasy
feeling that that wild Frenchman
had awakened in her something
that Sam might have awakened if
he had not been so inhibited
himself. But after these years on
The River and the chewing of a
certain amount of dreamgum he
had lost many of his own inhibi-
tions.

It was too late for him.

Unless Cyrano left the scene . . .

“Hello, Sam," she said in En-
glish. “How are you on this fine
day?"

“Every day is fine here," he said.
“You can't even talk about the
weather, let alone do anything
about it."

She had a beautiful laugh.
“Come along with me to the
grailstone," she said. “It's almost
time for lunch."

Every day he swore not to come
near her because to do so hurt too
much. And every day he took
advantage of the smallest chance to
get as close to her as he could.

“Jim-dandy," he said. “Come
along. How's Cyrano?"

“Oh, very happy because he's
finally going to get a rapier.
Bildron, the swordsmith, prom-
ised that he'd have the first
one— after yours and the other
Councilmen's, of course. He'd
taken so long to reconcile him-
self to the fact that he would never
hold a metal sword in his hand

again. Then he heard about the
meteroite and came here — and
now the greatest swordsman in
the world will have a chance to
show everybody that his reputa-
tion wasn’t a lie, as some say.”

“Now Livy,” he said. “I didn’t
say people had lied about his repu-
tation. 1 said that maybe they
exaggerated some. I still don’t be-
lieve that story about his holding
off two hundred swordsmen all by
himself.”

“The fight at the Porte de Nesle
was authentic! And it wasn’t two
hundred, you’re the one pumping
it up, Sam, just as you always do.
There was a crowd of hired thugs
that could have been a hundred or
might just as well tiave been. Even
if there had been only twenty-five,
the fact is that Cyrano attacked
them all single-handed to save his
friend, the Chevalier de Lignieres
—he killed two and wounded sev-
en and ran the rest of them off.
That is God’s truth!”

“I don't want to get into an
argument about the merits of your
man,” he said. “Or about any-
thing. Let’s just talk like we used to
when we had so much fun— before
you got sick.”

She stopped, her face grim.

“I always. knew you resented
my illness, Sam.”

“No, that wasn't it,” he said. “I
think 1 felt guilty that you were
sick, as if somehow I were to
blame. But 1 never hated you for

it. I hated myself if I hated any-

one.

“I didn’t say you hated me,” she
said. “1 said you resented my ill-
ness and you showed it in many
ways. Oh, you may have thought
you were always noble and gentle
and loving — and most of the time
you were — you really were. But
there were enough times when you
looked, you spoke, you muttered,
you gestured — how can I describe
exactly how you were? I can’t, but
I knew you resented me, some-
times loathed me, because 1 was
sick.”

“I didn’t!” he cried so loudly
that a number of people stared.

“Why argue about it?” she said.
“Whether you did or not doesn't
matter now. I loved you then and 1
still do, in a way. But not as I did.”

He was silent during the rest of
the walk across the plain to the big
mushroom-shaped stone. The
cigar tasted like burning skunk
cabbage.

Cyrano was not present. He was
superintending the building of a
section of the wall which would
eventually guard the shore of The
River. Sam was glad. It was dif-
ficult enough for him to see Livy
alone but when she was with the
Frenchman, he could not endure
his thoughts.

In silence, he and Livy parted.

A BEAUTIFUL woman with
lovely, honey-colored hair ap-

proached him and he was able to
set aside his feelings about Livy
for a while. The woman’s name
was Gwenafra. She had, on evi-
dence, died at about the age of
seven in a country that must have
been Cornwall about the time the
Phoenicians came there to exploit
the tin mines. She had been resur-
rected among people of whom
none spoke her ancient Celtic lan-
guage and had been adopted by a
group that spoke English. From
her description, one of them had
been that Sir Richard Francis
Burton whom Sam had thought
he'd seen on the shore shortly be-
fore the meteorite struck. Burton
and his friends had built a small
sailboat and set out for the head-
waters of The River— as might
have been expected of a man who
had spent half his life exploring in
the wildernesses of Africa and the
other continents. On Earth Bur-
ton had sought the headwaters of
the Nile and had found, instead.
Lake Tanganyika. But on this
world he had again been seeking
the source of a river — the greatest
river of them all— undaunted by
the prospect that it might be ten
million miles long or even twenty.

After little more than a year his
boat had been attacked by evil
men and one had stuck a stone
knife into little Gwenafra and
thrown her into The River, where
she had drowned. She had awak-
ened the next day on the banks

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

somewhere far up in the northern
hemisphere. The weather was
colder, the sun weaker and the
people there said that you did not
have to go more than twenty
thousand grailstones before you
were in an area where the sun was
always half above, half below the
mountains. And there lived hairy,
ape-faced men ten feet tall and
weighing seven to eight hundred
pounds.

(This was true, Joe Miller had
been one of the titanthrops there.)

The people up River who
adopted her spoke Suomenkieltla ,
which in English meant Finnish.
DownRiver a little way were the
Swedes. These were twentieth-cen-
tury people who lived a peaceful
life and Gwenafra grew up rela-
tively happy with loving foster
parents. She learned Finnish,
Swedish, English, a Chinese dia-
lect of the fourth century B.C. and
Esperanto.

She drowned again by accident
one day and woke up here. She still
remembered Burton; she cherished
a childhood crush she had had for
him. But, being a realist, she was
ready to love other men. And she
had— and had just split with one,
Sam had heard. She wanted a
man who would be faithful to her
and these were not easy to find in
this world.

Sam was very much attracted to
her. The only thing that had kept
him from asking her to move in

with him had been the fear of
angering Livy. That fear was ridi-
culous— she had no claim on him
as long as she was living with
Cyrano. And she had made it plain
that she did not care what he did in
his private life — or his public life.
Nevertheless, against all logic, he
was afraid to take another woman
as his hutmate. He did not want to
snap the last thin link.

He chatted with Gwenafra a
while and confirmed that she was
still unattached.

LUNCH was upsetting. The
“roulette wheel" concealed
somewhere in the false bottom of
the grail, the wild caster of dice,
came up with a meal that only a
Goshute Indian could have swal-
lowed and even he might have
gagged a little. Sam threw out all
the food, but was able to console
himself with two cigars, cigarettes
and six ounces of an unfamiliar
but delicious liqueur. Just smell-
ing it sent his taste buds into a
dance.

The meeting with the Council
and John took three hours. After
much wrangling and a number of
votes, it was decided to put to the
people the question of amending
the Carta so that a pro tem Coun-
cilman could be elected. John held
up things for an hour, arguing that
a vote wasn't needed. Why couldn't

the Council simply say that the
amendment was passed? No
amount of explaining ever seemed
to clarify such matters in John's
head. It was not that he was un-
intelligent. It was just that he was
not emotionally suited to compre-
hend democracy.

The vote was unanimous to ac-
cept Firebrass as Hacking's offi-
cial visiting fireman. But he would
have a close eye kept on him.

After all this John rose and
made a speech, occasionally
lapsing from Esperanto into Nor-
man French when he was over-
powered by emotion. He thought
that Parolando should invade
Soul City before Soul City in-
vaded Parolando. The invasion
should be launched as soon as the
handguns and the armored amphi-
bian, Firedragon /, were ready.
However, it might be best to test
the mettle of their metal and the
troops on New Brittany first. His
spies were certain that Arthur
planned to attack them soon.

John's two toadies backed him,
but the others, including Sam,
voted them down. John's face be-
came red and he scolded and
drummed his fingers on the oak
table, but nobody decided to
change his mind.

After supper the drums relayed a
message from Hacking. Firebrass
would” be arriving tomorrow,
some time before noon.

Sam retired to his office. By the

light of lamps burning fish-
oil— soon they would have elec-
tricity— he and Van Boom and
Tanya Velitsky and John Wesley
O’Brien, the engineers, discussed
their ideas about the Riverboat
and drew rough sketches on paper.
Paper was still scarce, but they
would need enormous amounts to
draw their blueprints. Van Boom
said that they should wait until
they were able to make a certain
kind of plastic. Lines could be
drawn on this with magnetized
“pens” and corrections could
easily be made by demagnetizing.
Sam replied that that was fine.
But he wanted to start building the
Riverboat the moment the
amphibian was completed. Van
Boom said that he could not agree
to that. Too many things were in
the way.

It was late when Sam said good
night.

Van Boom pulled the Mark I
gun out of a large bag. “We have
ten of these now," he said. “This
one is yours. Compliments of
Parolando’s Engineering Corps.
And here are twenty packages of
powder and twenty plastic bul-
lets. You can sleep with them un-
der your pillow."

Sam thanked him. Van Boom
left and Sam barred the door.

He went into the back room to
talk to Joe Miller a while. Joe was
still awake, but he said he was tak-
ing no sedation that night. He

the FABULOUS riverboat

would be getting up in the
morning. Sam bade the giant good
night and went into his bedroom,
next to the pilothouse. He drank
two shots of bourbon and lay
down. After a while he managed
to doze, though he was afraid that
the three-o’clock rain would wake
him as usual and he would have
trouble getting back to sleep.

HE AWOKE but the rain was
long past. Shouts came from
somewhere and then an explosion
that rattled the ports in the pilot-
house. Sam leaped out of bed,
wrapped a kilt around his waist,
seized an axe in one hand and ran
into the pilothouse. He suddenly
remembered his pistol, but de-
cided he would go back for it when
he found out what was going on.

The River was still smothered in
fog, but hundreds of dark figures
were spilling out of it and the tops
of tall masts sticking out above it.
Torches were flaring all over the
plains and in the hills. Drums were
beating.

There was another explosion. A
brightness in the night with bodies
flying in all directions.

He looked through the star-
board port. The gates of the log
wall around King John's palace
were open and men were stream-
ing out. Among them was the
stocky figure of John.

By then more men had ap-
peared out of the mists over The

River. Bright starlight showed
them lining up and moving out,
rank after rank. The first of the in-
vaders were by now in the great
factories and advancing swiftly
across the plain toward the foot-
hills. Some explosions occurred
inside factories as bombs were
thrown to dislodge the defenders.
And then a red tail flared out,
disappeared, and something
black shot toward him. Sam threw
himself to the floor. A roar came
beneath him, the floor heaved and
the glass ports blew in. A wiff of
acrid smoke came to him and was
gone.

He should get up and run, he re-
alized, but he couldn't. He was
deafened and frozen. Another
rocket would be coming his way
and that one might be closer.

A giant hand gripped his shoul-
der and pulled him up. Another
hand slid under his legs and he was
being carried out. The arms and
the chest of the giant were very
hairy and as hard-muscled and as
warm as a gorilla's. A voice as
deep as if it were at the end of a
railroad tunnel rumbled, "‘Take
it eathy, Bothth."

“Put me down, Joe," Sam said.
“I'm all right, except for my
shame. And that's all right, too, 1
ought to feel ashamed."

His shock was fading and a
sense of relative calm flowed in to
fill the vacuum. The appearance
of the massive titanthrop had

steadied him. Good old Joe— he
might be a dumb subhuman and
sick at the moment, but he was
still worth a battalion.

Joe had put on his suit of leather
armor. In one hand was the haft of
an enormous double-headed axe
of steel. The face under the
hooded helmet was low-browed,
bulging with bone bars and but-
tresses and massive jaws. It was
the face of a being between ape
and man, though closer to man.
But the unexpected feature, the
comical yet terrifying feature,
was the nose. This was the huge
outlandishly protruding nose of
the proboscis monkey. It pro-
voked stares and laughter, though
few had the foolhardiness to laugh
in Joe's face. He was ten feet tall
and weighed almost as much as a
pair of lions.

“Who are they?" he rumbled.
“They from Thoul Thity ?"

“I don't know," Sam said. “Do
you feel up to fighting? How's the
head?"

“It hurtth. Yeah, I can fight
okay. Vere do ve go from here?"

Sam led him downhill toward
the men collecting around John.
He heard his name called and
turned to see the tall lanky figure
of de Bergerac, Livy by his side.
She carried a small round shield of
leather-covered oak and a steel-
tipped spear. Cyrano held a long,
dully shining blade. Sam's eyes
widened. It was a rapier.

Cyrano said, “ Morbleu !" He
switched to Esperanto. “Your
smith gave this to me just after
supper— he said there was no
sense in waiting/’ Cyrano
whipped the rapier, cutting the air
with a sharp sound. “I’ve come
alive again. Steel — sharp steel!”

A NEARBY explosion made
them all leap for the ground.
Sam waited until he was sure that
another rocket was not coming
and then looked at his pilothouse.

It had received a direct hit; its
front was blown open; a fire was
racing through it and would soon
be in the texas. His diary was gone
but he could retrieve his grail
later. It was indestructible.

In the next few minutes the
wooden missiles, tails flaming,
arched out, wobbling, from
wooden bazookas held on the
shoulders of the Parolandoj
rocketeers. The missiles landed
near and sometimes among the
enemy and exploded with gouts of
fire and much black smoke, quick-
ly carried away by the wind.

Three runners arrived to report.
The attack had been launched
from three places, all from The
River. The main body was concen-
trated here, apparently to seize the
Parolandoj leaders, the larger
factories and the amphibian. The
other two armies were about a mile
away on each side. The invaders

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

were composed of men from New
Brittany and Kleomanujo and the
Ulmaks from across The River.
The Ulmaks were savages who
had lived in Siberia circa 30,000
B.C. and whose descendants had
migrated across the Bering Straits
to become Amerinds.

So much for King John's spy ser-
vice, Sam thought. Unless— un-
less he is in on the attack . But if he
were he wouldn't be standing out
here where he's likely to get killed
any moment . . .

Anyway, Arthur of New Brit-
tany would never make a deal with
his murderer uncle.

The rockets continued to arc
down from both sides, the five-
pound warheads with their rock
fragment shrapnel taking a toll.
The Parolandoj had the advan-
tage; they could lie flat while their
rockets exploded among upright
targets. The invaders had to keep
moving, otherwise they might just
as well go home.

Nevertheless, it was frightening
to lie on the ground and wait for
the next noisy blast and hope that it
would not come closer than the last
one. There were screams from the
wounded that were not, however,
as heartrending as they would
have been if Sam had not been
nearly deafened. Then, suddenly,
the rockets had quit blowing up
the world. A huge hand shook
Sam’s shoulder. He looked up to
see that many around him were

getting to their feet. The ser-
geants were yelling into the
stunned ears of their men to form a
battle array. The enemy was so
close now that neither side was us-
ing the missiles or else they had all
been launched.

Ahead was a dark body, a sea of
screaming whooping fiends. They
ran up the hill and the first, sec-
ond, and third ranks fell, pierced
by arrows. But those behind did
not break, they leaped over the fall-
en and kept on coming. Suddenly,
the archers were being hammered
down or thrust through or clubbed.

Sam kept close behind Joe
Miller, who moved ahead slowly,
his axe rising and falling. And
then the giant was down, and the
enemy were struggling on top of
him like a pack of jackals on a lion.
Sam tried to get to him; his axe
smashed through a shield and a
head and an uplifted arm and then
he felt a burning pain along his
ribs. He was pushed back and
back, while he slashed away with
the axe. He stumbled over a pile of
wood. Above him was the burning
floor of his house; the stilts were on
fire.

He turned on his side and there
was the handgun, the Mark I, that
he had left by his bedside. Near it
lay three packages of powder
with the nitrate-soaked twists and a
number of the plastic bullets.

His axe was gone; it had be-
come wedged in a skull.

T WO men whirled by him in a
dance, their hands gripping
each other, straining, grunting with
the strain, glaring into each other’s
bloody faces. They stopped and
Sam recognized King John— his
opponent was taller but not as
thickly built. He, too, had tawny
hair and eyes that were blue in the
flames overhead.

Sam broke open the pistol, put
in the bullet and the charge as he
had done that morning up in the
hills, locked the barrel and rose to
his feet. The two men still strug-
gled, one slipping back a little,
then the other, trying to throw
each other. John held a steel knife
in his right hand, the other man a
steel axe.

Sam looked around; no one was
coming at him. He stepped for-
ward and extended the muzzle of
the big pistol, holding it steady
with both hands. He pulled the trig;
ger, the click sounded, the gun was
jarred to one side by the heavy
hammer, there was a flash, he had
the gun back in line, a boom, a
cloud of smoke — and John’s assail-
ant fell to one side, the entire right
side of his skull blown away.

John fell gasping onto the
ground. Then he raised himself,
looking at Sam, who was reload-
ing the gun. “Many thanks, part-
ner! That man was my nephew,
Arthur!’'

Sam did not reply. If he had
been thinking he would have

waited until Arthur had killed
John and then blown Arthur’s head
off. It was ironic that he, Sam, who
had much to gain by John’s death,
should be responsible for saving
him. Moreover, he could not ex-
pect gratitude from John. The
man had no such thing in his soul.

Sam completed reloading the
pistol and strode away, looking
for Joe Miller. But he saw Livy
reeling backward as a big Ul-
mak, whose left arm dangled
bloodily, drove her back with blows
of a stone axe on her shield. Her
spear had been broken and in a
few seconds he would have beaten
her to her knees or shattered the
shield. Sam reversed the pistol and
broke the Ulmak’s skull from be-
hind with the butt of his gun. Livy
fell exhausted and weeping on the
ground and he would have gotten
down to comfort her. But she
seemed all right and he did not
know where Joe Miller was. He
plunged into the embattled mass
and saw Joe on his feet again, de-
molishing heads, trunks and arms
with sweeps of his great axe.

Sam stopped a few paces from a
man who was coming up from be-
hind Joe, a large axe in both hands.
Sam fired and the bullet took part
of the man’s chest off.

A minute later, the invaders
were running for their lives. The
sky was graying; by its light it was
evident that Parolandoj were
coming in from north and south.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

The other two columns had been
shattered and the reinforcements
were outnumbering thejnvaders.
Moreover, they brought rockets,
which blew up the boats and canoes
waiting for the defeated.

Sam felt too exhilarated to be
depressed by the losses and the
damage. For the first time came
out of the blue funk that always
seized him during a fight. He
actually enjoyed the battle
during the last ten minutes.

A MOMENT later his pleasure
was gone. A wild-eyed and
naked Hermann Goering, his
scalp caked with blood, appeared
on the battleground. His arms
were raised straight up and he was
shouting, “Oh, brothers and sis-
ters! Shame! Shame! You have
killed, you have hated, you have
lusted for the blood and the ecstasy
of murder! Why did you not throw
down your arms and take in your
enemies with love? Let them do
with you what they would? You
would have died and suffered but
final victory would have been
yours! The enemy would have felt
your love— and the next time he
might have hesitated before again
waging war. And the time after
that and the next time he might
have asked himself, fcWhat am I
doing? Why am I doing this?
What good is this? I have gained
nothing — ' and your love would

have seeped through the stone over
his heart and—"

John, coming up behind
Goering, struck him on the back of
the head with the hilt of his knife.
Goering fell forward and lay on
his face without moving.

“So much for traitors," John
shouted. He stared around wildly
and then yelled, “Where are
Trimalchio and Mordaunt?"

Sam said, “They wouldn’t be
stupid enough to hang around
here. You’ll never catch them.
They’ll know you know they sold
out to Arthur.’’

John's striking of Goering was
illegal, since free speech was every
one's right in Parolando, Bpt Sam
did not think that arresting John
would be the right course at that
moment.

Sam, too, had felt like hitting
Goering.

Livy, still weeping, staggered
past. Sam followed her to where
Cyrano sat on a pile of corpses.
The Frenchman was wounded in a
dozen places, though not serious-
ly, and his rapier was bloody from
tip to guard. He had given a splen-
did account of himself and his
weapon.

Livy threw herself on Cyrano
and Sam turned away. She had not
even thanked him for having saved
her earlier.

Sam sighed.

There was a crash behind him.
He turned. The rest of his house

had fallen in, bringing the stilts
with it.

He felt drained of every atom of
strength, but there would be little
rest for him today. The casualties
and the damage had to be as-
sessed. The dead had to be taken
to the rendering factory up in the
hills, since their fat was used to
make glycerin. The practice was
gruesome but necessary and the
owners of the bodies did not mind.
Tomorrow they would be alive
and well again somewhere far
away along The River.

In addition, the entire popula-
tion would have to be kept ready
for a call to arms and the work on
erecting the walls along the River-
edge would have to be speeded up.
Scouts and messengers would
have to be sent out to determine
just what the military situation
was. The Ulmaks and the
Kleomenujoj and the New Bretons
might launch an all-out full-scale
attack.

A captain reported that Kleo-
menes, the leader of Kleomenujo,
had been found dead near the
Riveredge, where a piece of rock
shrapnel had entered his skull. So
ended the halfbrother of the great
Spartan, Leonidas, who defended
the pass of Thermopylos. Or so he
ended in this area at least.

Sam appointed some men to
leave by boat immediately for the
two countries. They were to in-
form them that Parolando did not

intend to take vengeance if the
new leaders would guarantee
friendship to Parolando. John
complained that he should have
been consulted and there was a
short but savage argument. Sam
finally agreed that John was right
in principle, but there was no time
to discuss certain matters. John
informed him that, under the law,
Sam had to take the time. Any de-
cision had to be agreed upon by
both of them.

Sam hated to agree but John was
right. They couldn't be giving con-
tradictory orders.

They went together to inspect
the factories. These were not bad-
ly damaged. The invaders had
not, of course, wanted to wreck
them since they had intended to
use them. The amphibian, the
Firedragon /, was untouched. Sam
shuddered when he thought of
what might have happened if it
had been completed and had fall-
en into the hands of the enemy.
With it, they could have crushed
the Parolandoj in the center and
dug in to fight on the perimeter un-
til reinforcements came. He
would set up a large special guard
around the vehicle.

He fell asleep after lunch in a
Councilman's hut. It seemed that
he had just closed his eyes when he
was shaken awake. Joe was stand-
ing over him, breathing bourbon
fumes from his tremendous
proboscis.

THE FABULOUS Rl VERBOAT

“The delegathyon from Thool
Thity chutht landed."

"Firebrass," Sam said, standing
up from the chair. “I forgot all
about him. What a time for him to
show up!"

HE WALKED down to the
River, where a catamaran was
beached near the grailstone. John
was already there, greeting the
delegation, which consisted of six
blacks, two Arabs and two Hindus.
Firebrass was a short, bronze-
skinned, curly-haired man with big
brown eyes flecked with green. His
huge forehead and shoulders and
thickly muscled arms contrasted
with his skinny legs, making him
look all top. He spoke in Esperanto
at first but later used English. It
was a very strange English, full of
terms and slang that Sam did not
understand. But there was a
warmth and openness about Fire-
brass that made Sam feel good just
to have him around.

“We better go back to
Esperanto," Sam said, smiling
and pouring three more slugs of
scotch into Firebrass's cup. "Is
that spaceman's lingo or Soul City
dialect?"

"Marsman's," Firebrass said.
"Soul City English is pretty wild,
but the official language, of
course, is Esperanto, though Hack-
ing was considering Arabic. But
he isn't too happy about his Arabs
any more," he added in a lower

voice, looking at Abd ar-rahman
and Ali Fazghuli, the Arab mem-
bers of his delegation.

“As you can see,” Sam said, “we
are in no condition to have a long
leisurely conference. Not now.
We have to clean up, get informa-
tion about what’s going on out-
side Parolando and set up our de-
fences. But you are welcome, of
course, and we’ll get around to
business within a few days.’’

“I don't mind,’’ Firebrass said.
“I’d like to look around, if you
don’t mind.’’

“I don’t, but my co-Consul has
to give his consent, too.’’

John, smiling as if it hurt his
teeth to be exposed to the air — and
it probably did this time — said
that Firebrass was welcome. But
he would have to be accompanied
by a guard of honor every time he
left the quarters that would be as-
signed to him. Firebrass thanked
him but another delegate,
Abdullah X, protested loudly and
occasionally obscenely. Fire-
brass said nothing for a minute
and then told Abdullah to be po-
lite, since they were guests. Sam
was grateful, though he wondered
if the whole speech had not been
arranged.

It had not been easy to sit there
and listen, though all of the vitriol-
ics had been hurled at the white
race in general. Though it trou-
bled him, Sam had to agree with
Abdullah; he was right about con-

ditions as they had been. But old
Earth was dead; they were living
in a new world.

Sam personally conducted the
delegates to three huts, side by
side, owned by men and women
who had been killed last night.
Then he moved into a hut near the
delegation.

Drums boomed by the grail-
stone. After a minute, drums from
across The River thundered back
an answer. The new chief of the
Ulmaks wanted peace. The old
chief, Shrubgrain, had been put to
death and his head would be de-
livered within the hour by canoe if
peace could be arranged. Shurb-
grain had failed his people by lead-
ing them to defeat.

Sam gave orders to transmit a
request for a conference with the
new chief, Threezburm.

Drums from Chernsky's Land
said that Iyeyasu, who ruled a
twelve-mile stretch of land be-
tween New Brittany and Kleo-
menujo, had invaded New Brit-
tany. The news meant that the New
Bretons would not be bothering
Parolando, but it also worried
Sam. Iyeyasu was a very ambi-
tious man. Once he had consoli-
dated his state with New Brittany
he might decide he was strong
enough to take Parolando.

More drums. Publius Crassus
sent his congratulations and
warmest regards, and he would be
visiting tomorrow to see what he

could do to aid Parolando.

And also to see how hard we’ve
been hit and if we'd be easy pick-
ings, Sam thought. So far, Publius
had been cooperative, but a man
who had served under Julius
Caesar was never above a little of
his own brand of Caesarism.

Goering, his head wrapped in a
bloody towel, staggered by, sup-
ported by two of his followers.
Sam hoped he would take the hint
and leave Parolando, but he didn't
have much faith in the German's
perceptiveness.

He went to sleep that night while
torches burned everywhere over
the land and guards peered into
the shadows and the mists. His
sleep was troubled, despite his in-
tense fatigue. He tossed and rolled
and once he awoke, his heart beat-
ing, his skin cold, certain that
there was a third person in the hut.
He fully expected to see the
shadowy figure of The Mysterious
Stranger crouched by his bed. But
nobody was there except the
monstrous form of Joe stretched
out on the huge bamboo bed near
him.

THE next morning he arose un-
refreshed in a refreshed world.
The three-o'clock rain had washed
away the blood and the stink of
gunpowder. The bodies were out
of sight and the sky was clear and

blue. Business as usual was re-
sumed but without about four
hundred and fifty men and wom-
en. Half of these were in the ren-
dering factory; the rest were in the
hospital. Those who wanted to be
put out of their misery were given
their wish. Time had been when an
axe was the only euthanasiast but
now, thanks to Parolando's tech-
nology, the work was done with a
potassium cyanide pill.

Some decided to stick it out. In
time their limbs or eyes would
grow back. Those afraid of the
pain boarded The Suicide Express.
There bodies would go to the ren-
dering factory.

Sam’s secretary had been killed.
Sam asked Gwenafra if she would
like to take Millie’s place. Gwen-
afra seemed very pleased; the new
position gave her a high status and
she had made no secret of the fact
that she liked to be near Sam.
Lothar von Richthofen, however,
did not seem pleased.

“Why shouldn’t she be my. sec-,
retary, regardless of her relation-
ship to you?” Sam said.

“There is no reason,” Lothar
said, “except that I might have a
very good chance with her if she
isn't around you much.”

“Let the best man win.”

“My sentiments, too, but I don't
like your wasting her time or lead-
ing her on. You know that you
won't take another hutmate as
long as Livy is here.”

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

“Livy has nothing to say about
what I do,” Sam said.

Lothar smiled slightly and said,
“Sure, Sam.”

Gwenafra tagged along with
him,, taking notes, sending mes-
sages, receiving them, arranging
schedules and appointments.
Though he was very busy, he found
moments when he could talk and
joke with her and he felt a warmth
every time he looked at her. Gwen-
afra seemed to adore him.

Two days passed. The twenty-
four hour shift on the amphibian
was showing results— it would be
completed in another two days.
The Soul City delegation strolled
around with two -of King John’s
men watching them. Joe Miller,
who had gone back to his bed after
the battle, said he was well again.
Now Sam had both Gwenafra and
the titanthrop with him and his
world seemed much more com-
fortable, though it was a long way
from being Utopia. Word came
via the drum telegraph that
Odysseus had loaded his ships with
flints and would be back in a
month. He had gone as com-
mander of a ten-boat fleet to bar-
ter with the chief of Selinujo. On
Earth she had been Countess Hunt-
ingdon, Selina Hastings, born
1707, died 1791. She was now a
member of the Church of the Sec-
ond Chance and traded her flint
with Parolando only because
Parolando permitted some of

Goering’s missionaries to preach
at will in its territory. In return
for the flint she had been promised
a small metal steamboat in which
she proposed to go up and down
The River and preach. Sam
thought she was fooling herself.
The first place she put into she was
liable to have her throat cut for the
sake of the boat. But that was her
business.

THE Councilmen met with the
Soul City delegation. Sam
would have liked to put it off, since
John was in a mood even uglier
than usual. One of his women had
tried to kill him — or at least so he
claimed. He had been stabbed in
the side before he broke her jaw
and knocked her head against the
corner of a table. The woman had
died an hour later still uncon-
scious, and John’s word that she
had attacked him first had to be
accepted. Sam would have liked to
have collected some neutral eye-
witness account but that was im-
possible.

John was in pain from the stab
wound, half-drunk with bourbon
as an anesthetic and smarting be-
cause the woman had dared to de-
fy him. He slumped in a large,
high-backed, ornately carved oak
chair covered with red hornfish
leather. One hand was around a
clay vessel full of whiskey, a
cigarette dangled from his lips and

he glowered at everybody. The
conference was taking place at a
round table in the largest room in
John’s palace.

Firebrass was talking. “Hack-
ing once believed in total segrega-
tion of whites and nonwhites. He
believed, fiercely believed, that
whites could never accept, not
really accept, nonwhite peoples,
that is, the blacks, Mongolians,
Polynesians, and Amerindians.
The only way nonwhites could live
with dignity, feel beautiful, be a
people with its own personality
and pride, was the way of segre-
gation. Equal but separate.

“Then his leader, Malcolm X,
quit the Black Muslims. Malcom
X saw that he was wrong. Not all
whites were devils, racist Fiends,
any more than all blacks had flat
noses. Hacking fled the states to
live in Algend and there he found
that it was the attitude that made
racism, not the color of the skin."

Hardly an original or surprising
discovery, Sam thought. But he
had told himself that he would not
interrupt.

“And then the young whites of
the United States rejected their
parents' prejudices and they sup-
ported the blacks in their strug-
gles. They got right out on the
streets and demonstrated, rioted,
laid down their lives for the blacks.
They genuinely seemed to like
blacks, not because they thought
they ought to, but because blacks

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

were human beings and human be-
ings can be liked or even loved.

“Hacking, however, wasn't ever
really at ease with an American
white, try though he did to think of
them as human beings. He was
ruined, just as most whites, most
older whites, were ruined. But he
tried and he respected those young
whites that told their parents, their
white racist society, to go to hell.

“Then he died, as everybody
did, black or white. He found him-
self among ancient Chinese and he
wasn’t very happy with them be-
cause they regarded all peoples
except the Chinese as inferior.’’

Sam remembered the Chinese of
Nevada and California in the early
'60s, the hard-working, thrifty,
quiet, meek, cheery little brown
men and women. They had taken
abuse that most people would not
give a mule, been spat upon,
cursed, tortured, stoned, robbed,
raped, suffered about every in-
dignity and crime that a people
could suffer. They had had no
rights whatsoever, no protector
or protection. And they had never
murmured, never revolted, they
just endured. What thoughts had
those masklike faces hidden? Had
they, too, believed in the
superiority of any Chinese to any
white devil? If so, why had they not
struck back, not once?

Firebrass said, “So Hacking left
in a dugout, floated downRiver
and after many thousands of miles

settled down among some blacks
of seventeenth-century A.D.
Africa. Ancestors of the Zulus be-
fore they migrated to southern
Africa. He learned Zulu but after
a while he left. Their customs were
too repulsive and they were too
bloody minded for him.

‘Then he lived in an area where
the people were a mixture of
Dark Age Huns and dark whites of
the New Stone Age. They ac-
cepted him well enough, but he
missed his own people, the Amer-
ican blacks. So he took off again
and was captured by ancient
Moabites and enslaved, escaped,
was captured by ancient Hebrews
and put into grail slavery, escaped
-again, found a little community
of blacks who'd been pre-Civil War
slaves and was happy for a while.
But their Uncle Tom attitudes and
their superstitions got on his
nerves and he took off, sailed
downRiver and lived with several
other peoples. Then, one day,
some big blond whites, Germans
of some kind, raided the people he
was with. He fought, was killed.

“He was resurrected here.
Hacking became convinced that
the only happy states on The River
are going to be made up of people
with similar colors, similar tastes,
and of the same terrestrial per-
iod. Anything else just won't work.
People here aren't going, to
change. Back on Earth he could be-
lieve in progress, because the

young whites were flexible
minded. The old ones would die off
and then the children of the young
whites would be even more free of
racial prejudice. But here that just
isn't going to take place. Every
man’s set in his ways. So, unless
Hacking just happened to find a
community of late twentieth-cen-
tury whites, he would find no
whites without racial hatreds or
prejudices. Of course, the ancient
whites didn’t have any, but they’re
too strange for a civilized man.”

SAM asked, “What’s all this
leading up to?”

“We want a homogeneous na-
tion. We can't get all late twen-
tieth-century blacks, but we can
get as black a nation as possible.
Now, we know that you have ap-
proximately three thousand blacks
in Parolando. We would like to
exchange our Dravidians, Arabs,
any nonblacks, for your blacks.
Hacking is making similar pro-
posals to your neighbors, but he
doesn't have any lever with them.”
King John sat up and said, loud-
ly, “You mean he doesn't have
anything they want?”

Firebrass looked coolly at John
and said, “That's about it. But
we'll have a lever some day.”

“Do you mean when you have
enough steel weapons?” Sam said.
Firebrass shrugged.

John crashed his empty cup
down on the table. “Well, we don't

want your Arabs or your
Dravidians or any of your Soul
City dregs,” he shouted. “But I’ll
teli you what we will do. For every
ton of bauxite or cryolite or ounce
of platinum, we will give you one
of our black citizens! You can
keep your Saracen infidels or send
them packing downRiver or
drown them for all we care.”

“Wait a minute,” Sam said.
“We can't give our citizens away.
If they want to volunteer, fine. But
we don't just give anybody away.
This is a democracy.”

Firebrass’s expression had dark-
ened at John's outburst. “I wasn’t
suggesting that you give anybody
away,” he said. “We’re not slave
dealers, you know. What we want
is a one-per-one-voluntary ex-
change. The Wahhabi Arabs,
whom ar-Rahman and Fazghuli
represent, feel they're unwelcome
at Soul City and they would like to
go where they could congregate in
their own community, form a sort
of Kasbah, you might say.”

Sam thought this sounded fishy.
Why couldn’t they do that just as
well in Soul City? Or why didn't
they just get up and leave? One of
the beauties of this world was that
ties or property or dependence on
income did not exist. A man could
carry everything he owned on his
back — and building another house
was easy in a world where new
bamboo grew two inches a day.

It was possible that Hacking

wanted to get his people into
Parolando so that they could spy
or revolt when Hacking invaded.

Sam said, “We’ll put your
proposition about the exchange
to each individual. That’s all we
can do. Now, does Sinjoro Hack-
ing plan to keep on supplying us
with the minerals and with wood?”
“As long as you keep on send-
ing us raw ore and steel weapons,”
Firebrass said. “But Hacking is
thinking of upping the price.”
John’s fist smashed into the
table top again. “We will not be
robbed,” he shouted. “We are pay-
ing too much now. Don’t push us,
Sinjoro Firebrass, or you may
find yourselves with nothing.
Not even your lives!”

“Take it easy, Your Majesty,”
Sam said quietly. To Firebrass he
said, “John isn’t feeling well.
Please forgive him. However, he
does have a point. We can be
pushed only so far.”

ABDULLAH X, a very big and
very black man, jumped up
and pointed a big finger at Sam.
In English, he said, “You honkies
had better quit badmouthing us.
We won't take any crap from you.
Mister Whitey! None! Especially
from a man that wrote a book like
you did about Nigger Jim. We
don’t like white racists and we
only deal with them because
there’s nothing else to do but that
just now.”

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

“Take it easy, Abdullah,” Fire-
brass said. He was smiling and
Sam wondered if Abdullah's
speech was part of a well prepared
program. Probably Firebrass
was wondering if John's explo-
sions had been rehearsed. Actors
didn't have to be politicians, but
politicians had to be actors.

Sam groaned and said, “Did you
read Huckleberry Finn , Sinjoro
X?"

Abdullah, sneering, said, “I
don’t read trash.”

“Then you don’t know what
you’re talking about, dp you?”

Abdullah’s face darkened. Fire-
brass grinned.

“I don't have to read that racist
crap, man,” Abdullah shouted.
“Hacking told me all about it and
what he says is good enough for
me.

“You read it and then come
back and we'll discuss it," Sam
said.

“You crazy?” Abdullah said.
“You know there aren’t any books
on this world.”

“Then you lost out, didn't you?”
Sam said. He was trembling a lit-
tle; he wasn’t used to being talked
to like this by a black man. “Any-
way,” Sam said, “this isn't a
literary tea and discussion group.
Let's stick to the issue.”

But Abdullah would not stop
shouting about the books that
Sam had written. And John, los-
ing his temper, leaped up and

screamed, “ Silentu , negracor

John had taken the Esperanto
word for “black” or “negro” and
infixed the disparaging “-ac-”
particle. He had gotten his point
over quite well.

There was a moment of shock
and silence. Abdullah X’s mouth
was open, then it closed and he
looked triumphant, almost
happy. Firebrass bit his lip. John
leaned on the table on his fists and
scowled. Sam puffed on his cigar.
He knew that John's contempt for
all humanity had made him in-
vent the term. John had no racial
prejudice; he had never seen more
than a half-dozen blacks during
his lifetime on Earth. But he cer-
tainly knew how to insult a per-
son; the knowledge was second
nature to him.

“I’m walking out,” Abdullah X
said. “I may be going home— and
if I do you can bet your white skin
that you'll pay hell getting any
more aluminum or platinum.
Mister Charlie."

Sam rose to his feet and said,
“Just a minute. If you want an
apology, I extend it on behalf of
all Parolando."

Abdullah looked at Firebrass,
who looked away. Abdullah said,
“I want an apology from him,
now!" He pointed at King John.

Sam leaned close to John and
said softly, “There's too much at
stake to play the proud monarch.
Your Majesty! And you may be

playing into their hands with your
little fit. They are up to some-
thing, you can bet on that. Apolo-
gize.

John straightened up and said,

“I apologize to no man, espe-
cially not to a commoner.”

Sam snorted and gestured with
his cigar. “Can't you get it through
your thick Plantagenet head that
there isn't any such thing as royal
blood or divine right of kings any
more, that we're all commoners?
Or all kings?''

JOHN did not reply. He walked
out. Abdullah looked at Fire-
brass, who nodded. Abdullah
walked out.

Sam said, “Well, Sinjoro Fire-
brass, what next? Do you people
go home?''

Firebrass shook his head. “No, 1
don't believe in hasty decisions.
But the conference is suspended as
far as the Soul City delegation is
concerned. Until John Lackland
apologizes. I'll give you until
noon tomorrow to decide what to
do.''

Firebrass turned to leave. Sam
said, “I'll talk to John, but he's as
hardheaded as a Missouri mule.''

“I'd hate to see our negotiations
fold because one man can't keep
his insults to himself,'' Firebrass
said. “And I'd also hate to see our
trade stop, because that would
mean no Riverboat for you."

Sam said, “Don't get me wrong,

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

Sinjoro Firebrass. I'm making
no threats. But-I won't be stopped.
I'll get the aluminum if I have to
kick John out of the country my-
self. Or, alternatively, if I have to
go down to Soul City and get the
aluminum myself.”

“I understand you,” Firebrass
said. “But what you don't under-
stand is that Hacking isn't out for
power. He only wants to have a
well protected state so that his citi-
zens can enjoy life. And they will
enjoy their life because they'll all
have similar tastes and similar
goals. In other words, they'll all be
black.”

Sam grunted and then said,
“Very well.” He fell silent but just
before Firebrass left he called,
“One minute. Have you read
Huckleberry FinnT'

Firebrass turned back. “Sure. I
thought it was a great book when I
was a kid. I read it again when I
was in college and I could see its
flaws then.”

“Were you disturbed because
Jim was called Nigger Jim?”

“You have to remember that I
was bom in nineteen-seventy-five
on a farm near Syracuse, New
York. Things had changed a lot by
then and the farm had originally
been owned by my great-great-
great grandfather, who came up
from Georgia to Canada via the
underground railway and then
purchased the farm after the Civil
War. No, I wasn't offended by

your use of the word. Negroes were
called niggers openly in the time
you wrote about and nobody
thought anything of it. Sure, the
word was an insult. But you were
portraying people as they actual-
ly talked and the ethical basis of
your novel, the struggle between
Huck’s duty as a citizen and his
feeling for Jim as a human being
and the victory of the human feel-
ing in Huck — 1 was moved. The
whole book was an indictment of
slavery, of the semifeudal society
of the Mississippi, of supersti-
tion— of everything stupid of that
time. So why should I be offended
by it?”

“Then why—”

“Abdullah — whose original
name was George Robert
Lee — was born in nineteen-
twenty-five and Hacking was bom
in nineteen-thirty-eight. Blacks
were niggers then to a lot of
whites, though not all. They found
out the hard way that violence — or
the threat of it, the same thing that
the whites had used to keep them
down — was the only way to get
their rights as citizens of the
United States. You died in nine-
teen-ten, right? But you must have
been told by any number of peo-
ple what happened after that?”

Sam nodded. “It's hard to be-
lieve. Not the violence of the riots.
Plenty of that happened in my life-
time and nothing, I understand,
ever equaled the Draft Act riots in

New York City during the Civil
War. 1 mean, what’s hard to
visualize is the licentiousness of
the late twentieth century.”

FIREBRASS laughed and said,
“Yet you’re living in a society
that is far more free and licen-
tious— from the viewpoint of the
nineteenth century — than any
society in the twentieth.

You’ve adapted.”

“I suppose so,” Sam replied.
“But the two weeks of absolute
nudity that the entire human spe-
cies lived through during the first
days after resurrection ensured
that mankind would never again
be the same. Not as regards nud-
ity, anyway. And the undeniable
fact of the resurrection shattered
many fixed ideas and attitudes.
Though the diehard is still with us,
as witness your Wahhabi Mos-
lems.”

“Tell me, Sinjoro Clemens,”
Firebrass said. “You were an
early liberal, far ahead of your
times in many things. You spoke
up against slavery and were for
equality. And when you wrote the
Magna Carta for Parolando
you insisted that there Should be
political equality for all species,
races and both sexes. I notice that
a black man and a .white woman
live almost next door to you. Be
hpnest, doesn't it disturb you to
see that?”

Sam drew in smoke, blew it out

and said, “To be honest, yes, it did not downright pain, by leaving
disturb me. Well, to tell the truth, Parolando.”
it almost killed me! What my “Are you threatening me?"

mind told me and what my re- “Not with any action from me.

flexes told me were two different But there are plenty who may get
things. I hated it. But 1 stuck to my so riled up they'll run you out on a
guns, I said nothing, I became ac- rail. Or take you down to The
quainted with that couple and I River and drown you. You’re up-
learned to like them. And now, setting everybody with your
after a year, it bothers me only a preachings. This state was found-
very little. And that will go away in ed with one main goal, the build-
time.’’ ing of the Riverboat. Now, a man

“The difference between may say anything he wants to and
you — representing the white lib- not run foul of the law here. But
eral— and the youth of Hacking’s there are those who sometimes ig-
day and mine was that we were not nore the law and I wouldn’t want to
bothered. We accepted it.’’ have to punish them because you

“Don’t I get any credit for lift- tempted them. I suggest that you
ing myself by my mental boot- do your Christian duty and re-
straps?’’ Sam asked. move yourself from the premises.

“Yawblaw,” Firebrass said, That way, you won’t be tempting
lapsing into English— of a sort, good men and women to commit
“Two degrees off is better than violence.’’

ninety. Pin it.’’ “I’m not a Christian,’’ Goering

said.

HE WENT out. Sam was left “I admire a man who can admit
alone. He sat for a long that. I don’t think I ever met a
while, then stood up and went out- preacher who came out and said
side. The first person he saw was so, in so many words.”

Hermann Goering. His head was “Sinjoro Clemens,” Goering
still wrapped in a towel but his said, “I read your books when I
skin was less pale and his eyes did was a young man in Germany,
not look odd. first in German and then in Eng-

Sam said, “How’s your head?” lish. But levity or mild irony aren’t
“It still hurts. But I can walk going to get us any place. I am not
without driving hot spikes in it a Christian, though I try to prac-
every time I take a step.” tice the better Christian virtues. I

“I don’t like to see a man suf- am a missionary for the Church
fer,” Sam said. “So I suggest that of the Second Chance. All Ter-
you could avoid more suffering, if restrial religions have been dis-

the FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 53

credited, even if some won’t admit
it. The Church is the first religion
to rise on the new world, the only
one which has any chance to sur-
vive. It — ”

“Spare me the lecture," Sam
said. “I’ve heard enough from your
predecessors and from you. What
I’m saying, in utter friendliness
and a desire to save you from
harm and also, to be honest, to get
you out of my craw, is that you
should take off. Right now. Or
you'll be killed."

“Then I’ll rise at dawn tomor-
row somewhere else and preach
The Truth there, wherever I find
myself. You see, here, as on Earth,
the blood of the martyr is the seed
of the Church. The man who kills
one of us only ensures that The
Truth, the chance for eternal
salvation, will be heard by more
people. Murder has spread our
faith up and down The River far
faster than any conventional
means."

"Congratulations," Sam said ex-
asperatedly, dropping into Eng-
lish as he often did when angry.
“But tell me, doesn't the repeated
killing of your missionaries
bother you? Aren't you afraid of
running out of body?"

"What do you mean?"

"Tenets, anyone?''

Sam got no reaction except a
puzzled look. Sam resumed in
Esperanto. "One of your major
tenets, if I remember correctly, is

that Man wasn’t resurrected so he j
could enjoy life here forever. He i
is given only a limited time, though
it may look like a long time to
most, especially if they don’t hap-
pen to be enjoying life here. You
postulate something analogous
to a soul, something you call a
psychomorph, right? Or some-
times a ka . You have to, otherwise
you can’t claim a continuity of
identity in a man. Without it a
man who dies is dead, even if his
body is reproduced exactly and
made alive again. That second
body is only a reproduction. The
Lazarus has the mind and the
memories of the man who died, so
he thinks he's the man who died.
But he isn't. He's just a living du-
plicate. Death terminated the first
man. He's through.

"Unless he has a soul — or a psy-
chomorph or a /ctf — call it what
you will. This is an entity which is
born with the body, accompanies
it, registers and records every-
thing the body does and, indeed,
must be an incorporeal incor-
poration of the body, if you'll ex-
cuse that contradiction. So that,
when the flesh dies, the ka still
exists. It exists in some fourth
dimension or in some polariza-
tion which protoplasmic eyes can't
see or mechanical devices can't
detect. Is that correct?"

"You're close enough," Goer-
ing said. "Crudely put but satis-
factory."

((CO FAR," Sam said, expel- energy-matter converters, made
^ling a big cloud of green whole and young again and then
smoke, "we have— you have, not recordings are made of these
I— the postulated soul of the bodies — which are destroyed and
Christians and the Moslems and the dead are raised on a new world,
others ad nauseam . But you claim such as this, again through e-m
that the soul does not go to a hell or conversion,
a heaven. It flits around in some "The psychomorphs, or kasy
sort of fourth-dimensional limbo, have an affinity to their proto-
It would do so forever if it were plasmic twins. The moment a
not for the interference of other duplicate of the dead body is
beings. These are extra-Terres- made, the ka attaches itself and
trials who came into existence begins recording. So that, if the
long before humanity did. These body is killed and duplicated a
superbeings came to Earth when hundred times, the ka still retains
mankind did not yet exist — in fact, the identity, the mind and the
they visited every planet in the uni- memories of all the bodies. So that
verse that might have sentient life it is not just one duplicate after
someday." another being created. It is a mat-

"You're not phrasing exactly ter of preservation of the pristine
as we do," Goering said. "We individual."
maintain that every Galaxy has "But!" Sam said, waving his
one — or perhaps many — ancient cigar and then stabbing its glow-
species inhabiting certain planets, ing end close to Goering's cheek.
These beings may have arisen in "But! You maintain that a man
our Galaxy or they may have or- cannot be killed an indefinite
iginated in an earlier, now dead, number of times. You say that.
Galaxy or universe. In any event, after a couple of hundred times
they are wise and knew long ago death does have a final effect,
that sentient life would arise on Continued dying weakens the link
Earth and they set up devices between body and ka and even-
which started recording these sen- tually the duplication of the body
tients from the moment they ap- does not cause the ktt to merge with
peared. These devices are unde- it. The ka wanders off, haunts the
tectable by the sentients. spooky corridors of the fourth

"At some time which these An- dimension or whatever. It be-
cients, as we call them, have deter- comes, in effect, a ghost, a lost
mined, the recordings are sent to a soul. It is done for."
special place. There the dead are "That is the essence of our
fleshed out from the recordings by faith," Goering said. "Or I should

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

say our knowledge, since we know
this to be true.”

Sam raised his bushy eyebrows.
“Indeed? Know?”

“Yes. Our founder heard The
Truth a year after Resurrection, a
year to the day after all of human-
ity rose from the dead. A man
came to him at night as he prayed
for a revelation on a high ledge up
in the mountains. This man told
him certain things, showed him
certain things, that no terrestrial
mortal could tell or show. This
man was an agent of The Ancients
and he revealed The Truth, and
told our founder to go out and
preach the doctrine of the Second
Chance.

“Actually, Second Chance is a
misnomer. It is really our First
Chance, because we never had a
chance for salvation and eternal
life while we were on Earth. But life
on Earth was a necessary prelude
to this Riverworld. The Creator
made the universe and then The
Ancients preserved humankind—
indeed, all sentients throughout
the universe. They preserved . But
salvation is up to mankind only.

“It is up to each man to save
himself, now that he has been
given the chance.”

“Through the Church of the Sec-
ond Chance and that only, I sup-
pose,” Sam said. He did not' want
to sneer but he could not help it.

“That is what we believe,” Goer-
ing said.

64YV7HAT were the credentials
▼ ▼ of this mysterious strang-
er?” Sam said. He thought of his
Mysterious Stranger, and felt
panic. Could the two be the same?
Or from among the same beings,
who called themselves the Ethi-
cals? His Stranger, the man who
sent the ‘nickel-iron meteorite here
and who had enabled Joe Miller to
see the Tower in the mists of the
North Polar Sea, was a renegade
of the Ethicals. If he were to be be-
lieved.

“Credentials?” Goering said.
“Papers from God?” He laughed.
“The founder knew that his visi-
tor could not be just a man be-
cause he knew things that only a
god, or a superior being, coiild
know about him. And he showed
him some things that he had to
believe. And he told him how we
were brought back to life and why.
He did not tell him everything.
Some things will be revealed later.
Some things we must find out for
ourselves.”

“What is the name of this
founder?” Sam Said. “Or don’t you
know? Is that one of the hidden
things?”

“No one knows,” Goering said.
“It is not necessary to know.
What is a name? He only called
himself Viro. That is, in
Esperanto, a man. From the Latin
vir. We call him La Fondinto, The
Founder, or La Viro, The Man.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“No, but I have met two who
knew him well. One was there when
LaViro preached the first time,
seven days after the Stranger had
talked to him.”

“La Viro is definitely male? Not
a woman?”

“Oh, yes!”

Sam sighed deeply and said,
“That's a great weight off my
mind. If the founder had turned out
to be Mary Baker Eddy I would
have curled up and died.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Sam said, grin-
ning. “I wrote a book about her
once. I wouldn't want to meet her;
she'd scalp me alive. But some of
the wild mystical things you told
me reminded me of her.”

“Except for the ka , everything in
our explanation is based on the
physical. And the ka is physical
but at right angles, you might say,
to our reality. We believe that it is
science, the science of The
Ancients, which has given us a
physical resurrection. There's
nothing supernatural about any-
thing, except our belief in The
Creator, of course. The rest is all
science.”

“Like Mary Baker Eddy's reli-
gion?” Sam asked.

“I do not know of her.”

“So how do we attain this salva-
tion?”

“By becoming love. And that
implies, of course, that we do not
offer violence, even in self-defense.

We believe that we can become
love only by attaining a certain
transcendent state and that comes
through self-knowledge. So far
most of mankind has not learned
how to use dreamgum; man has
abused the drug, just as he abuses
everything.”

“And you think you have be-
come love , whatever that phrase
means?”

“Not yet. But I am on the way.”
“Through dreamgum?”

“Not just with it. It helps. But
you have' to act, too, you have to
preach and suffer for your belief.
And learn not to hate. Learn to
love.”

“So that is why you oppose my
Riverboat? You think that we are
wasting our time by building it?”
“It's a goal that will bring no one
any good. So far it has resulted in
the devastation of the land, in
greed and pain and bloodshed, in
anxiety and treachery. In hate,
hate, hate! And for what? So you
can have what nobody else has, a
giant boat of metal propelled by
electricity, the apex of the tech-
nology this planet offers, a ship of
fools. So you can journey to the
headwaters of The River. When
you get there, then what? You
should be journeying to the head-
waters of the soul!”

“There are some things you
don’t know," Sam said. His
smugness was soured by a vision.
There was the devil, crouching in

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

the darkness, whispering in his
ear. But someone had crouched in
the darkness and whispered in the
ear of the founder of the Church,
"too. Was the Church’s Stranger the
devil? The being who had come to
Samuel Clemens had said that the
others were the devils and he
wanted to save mankind.

The devil would say something
like that, of course.

“Don’t my words touch your
heart at all?” Goering said.

Sam rapped his chest with his
fist and said, “Yes, I do believe I
have a touch of indigestion.”

Goering made a fist and clamped
his lips.

“Watch out, you’ll lose your
love,” Sam said and walked away.
But he did not feel particularly tri-
umphant, It was a fact that he did
have a little stomach upset. Invin-
cible ignorance always upset him,
even though he knew he should just
laugh at it.

VII

THE afternoon of the next day
arrived. Sam Clemens and
John Lackland had been arguing
all morning. John said that he
would never apologize for any-
thing he said to a commoner, es-
pecially to a man called Abdul-
lah, a Saracen.

Finally Sam, exasperated past
caution and reasonableness, said,
“We can’t afford to have the baux-

ite cut off by Hacking. We can’t af-
ford anything that will put a stop to
building the Riverboat. Maybe
you’re doing this to force a war be-
tween us and Soul City. It isn’t go-
ing to work, Your Majesty!”

Sam had been walking back and
forth, waving a panatela as he
spoke. John sprawled before the
oaken round table in Sam’s
pilothouse. Joe Miller sat in a
corner on a big chair specially built
for him. The massive palaeo-
lithic Mongolian, Zaksksromb,
stood behind John.

Suddenly, Sam whirled and
planked both fists on the table.
Leaning on the table, his cigar in
one corner of his mouth, the red-
dish tangle of his eyebrows drawn
down, he snarled at John.

“You gave in once, at Runny-
mede, when you signed the Magna
Carta. It was about the only de-
cent thing you ever did during your
reign — and there are some who say
you had your fingers crossed then.
Well, this is another showdown,
John, Your Majesty. You apolo-
gize to Abdullah, who has a right
to an apology — or I’ll call a
special session of the Council and
we'll determine your fitness to
continue as co-Consul!”

John glowered at him for a full
minute at the least. Then he said,
“Your threats don’t scare me. But
it’s evident that you would sooner
plunge our land into civil war than
go to war with Soul City. I do not

understand this madness, but
then a rational man always has
trouble understanding irration-
ality. So — I will apologize, why
not? A king can afford to be
gracious to a commoner. It costs
him nothing and enhances his
graciousness.”

John rose and swaggered out, his
huge bodyguard behind him.

Ten minutes later Sam heard
that John had appeared at the state
guest house and offered his
apology. Abdullah X accepted it,
though sullenly. It was evident
that he had been ordered to do so.

Just before the factory whistles
announced the end of lunch hour,
Cawber entered. He sat down
without waiting for Sam to invite
him. Sam raised his eyebrows, be-
cause this was the first time that
this had happened. There was
something indefinable in Caw-
ber’s attitude. Sam, watching
him carefully, listening to every
inflection of his voice, decided
that his attitude was that of a
slave who has decided to be a slave
no more.

CAWBER knew that he would
be the emissary to Soul City.
He sat leaning forward, huge black
arms resting on the oak, his hands
spread out. He spoke in Esperanto
and, like many people, often in the
present tense, using an adverb of
time to indicate future or past if
he wanted to clarify.

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

Cawber’s team had talked to ev-
ery one of the approximately three
thousand undoubted Negroes
(there was some confusion of
classification about some of the
prehistorics). A third of these was
willing, though not eager, to go to
Soul City in exchange for Hack-
ing’s unwanted citizens. Most
were late twentieth-century
blacks. The others maintained
that they had work that gave them
prestige, that they liked being on
an equal footing with the whites
and that they did not want to give
up their chance to be on the River-
boat.

The latter was probably the big-
gest determinant, Sam thought. He
was not the only one who dfeamed
of the Riverboat. It drove through
the minds of many during sleep,
gleaming like a jewel with a fire-
fly trapped inside it.

Firebrass and his people were re-
quested to come to the conference
room. Firebrass was late because
he had been inspecting the air-
plane. He was laughing about its
quaintness, fragility and slow-
ness, and yet he was envious that
von Richthofen would be the one
to fly it.

“You’ll certainly get a chance to
fly it, too,” Sam said. “Provided
that you are still here, of course,
when — ”

Firebrass waved aside Sam’s as-
surances, became serious. “What is
your decision, gentlemen, re-

garding my government’s propo-
sal?”

Sam looked at John, who ges-
tured that Sam had the floor. John
intended that any ill feelings should
first be directed at Sam.

“This is a democracy,” Sam
said. “And we can’t tell our citizens
to get out unless they’ve been guilty
of illegal behavior. So, as I see
it — as we see it — any citizen of
Parolando may go to Soul City if
he wishes. 1 think we actually
reached basic agreement on this
when we last met. It will be up to
your government to negotiate
with each citizen. As for taking in
your Arabs and Dravidians and
so forth— we’ll give them a chance
to come with us if they want: but
we reserve the right to get rid of
them if they don’t work out. Where
they’ll go then is up to them.”

“Well,” Firebrass said, “I don’t
suppose Hacking wants anybody
who isn't willing to live in Soul
City, no matter how black that
person is.”

“What about the shipments of
minerals?” Sam said. “Will those
be discontinued during the nego-
tiations?”

“I really couldn’t say," Fire-
brass replied. “I doubt it, but I'd
have fto confer. Of course, you’ll
have to keep up your present rate
of ore and weapons 'to us before
the price is raised.”

“I notice you said is , not might
be" Sam said.

“Anything I say is subject to
confirmation or negation from
Soul City,” Firebrass said, smiling.

The rest of the conference was
that Cawber would go to Soul City
as Parolando’s ambassador if the
Carta could be changed to arrange
it. Everything else was still up in
the air. Sam Clemens received the
impression that Firebrass did not
intend to speed things up. Quite
the contrary. He was willing to let
things drag on or even to put his
own foot on the brake if things
showed signs of accelerating. He
wanted to remain in Parolando
and Sam could only think that he
wished to do so in order to spy.
Perhaps he also wanted to stir up
trouble.

Later, when he discussed the
meeting with John, he found some
variations to his conclusions.
John agreed that Firebrass was a
spy but he could not see why Fire-
brass would stir up trouble.

“He would want the boat to be
built as swiftly as possible. The
sooner it’s completed, the sooner
Hacking will try to seize it. Do
you think for one moment that
Hacking doesn't intend to get the
boat? Do you think for one mo-
ment that we have a single neigh-
bor who doesn’t intend to try for
the boat? Arthur made the abor-
tive attempt to take us over be-
cause of his hatred for me. He
should have waited until the boat
was nearly completed and then.

with Kleomenes and the Ulmaks,
launched all the force they could
mount in an all-out attack. As
things worked out* he and Kleo-
menes were killed and lyeyasu has
invaded their countries while
their successors are fighting
among themselves.”

“According to our spies* he's
winning, too*” Sam said.

“If he consolidates his state with
the other two* then he'll be a very
formidable enemy.”

And so will you be, John Lack-
land, Sam thought. Of all the peo-
ple I II have to watch after the boat
is built, youll bear the closest
watching . . .

FI REBRASS announced that he
and his delegation would re-
main at Soul City's embassy while
the negotiations went on.

“It's nice to have you*'' Sam
said. “But Soul City has its own in-
dustries. I know it's been using our
ore to make weapons and several
things our spies can't find out
about.”

Firebrass looked surprised and
then he laughed uproariously.
“You twist my stick, stymate!" he
said in English. Then, in Esperan-
to, “Well, why shouldn't we be
frank? I like that. Yes* we know
you have spies among us just as
you know we have ours here. Who
doesn't have his men in his neigh-
bors' lands? But what are you get-
ting at?"

“You're the most technically
trained man Hacking has. You're a
Ph. D. You’re in charge of the fac-
tories and of research and devel-
opment. So why does Hacking
send you here when he needs you
there?”

“I’ve set everything up to run
smoothly. Soul City doesn't need
me right now— and I was bored. I
wanted to come here* where it’s
at.”

“So you can see what we’re do-
ing, like our Mark 1 handguns and
our airplane and the amphibian
and its steam cannon?”

Firebrass grinned and nodded.
“Yes. Why not? If I don’t see these
things, someone else will.”

Sam relaxed. He said, “Have a
cigar. You can look all you want.
We're not doing anything you
wouldn't have figured out for
yourself* except for the steam
cannon maybe. That, by the way,
is my invention. Come along with
me. I'm very proud of it and want
you to see it. It's almost finished.”
Firedragon / rested inside its
supporting framework of timbers.
It was silvery gray and shaped like
a flat-bottomed boat but had
seven huge metal wheels with plas-
tic tires on each side. Twin screws
protected by- a screen protruded
from its rear. Its length was thirty
feet, its beam ten and its height was
twelve feet. Three turrets stuck
out from the upper deck. One held
the pilot and captain and radio

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

operator, though' at the moment
Parolando had ho radios. The
center turret was higher than the
others and the barrel of a short
stubby weapon encased in wood
projected from it. The rear turret
was designed for gunners who
would be armed with Mark I hand-
guns and perhaps rifles.

‘The amphibian bums wood al-
cohol to generate steam," Sam
said. “Let's go inside, through this
hatch in the side here. You'll notice
that the boiler takes up about a
third of the interior. There's a
good reason for that, as you'll see."

They climbed up a ladder into
the interior of the center turret,
which was lit by a single light bulb.
Firebrass exclaimed at this— it
was the only electric light bulb he
had ever seen on The River. Sam
explained that it was powered by a
fuel cell.

“And here is the Superdooper
Steam Machine Cannon," he said.
He pointed at the cylinder sticking
out of the gray bulkhead of the tur-
ret. Underneath it were a pistol-
like butt and a trigger. Firebrass
got behind it, put his finger on the
trigger and looked out through the
opening above the barrel. He
raised and lowered the weapon.
“There'll be a chair for the oper-
ator to sit in," Sam said. “He'll be
able to rotate the turret any way
he wants by pushing pedals. He
can depress the gun about twenty
degrees up or down. The steam

from the boiler is the motive
power for the eighty-caliber plas-
tic bullets. The gun is fired from an
open breech. That is, there’s no
bullet in the barrel when the trig-
ger is pulled. Pulling the trigger
releases a catch which permits the
breech block to move forward, im-
pelled by a spring. During its for-
ward travel the breech block picks
up a plastic bullet from the clip
and pushes it into the breech. Just
before the block reaches the
breech the camming lugs on either
side engage in their slots and turn
the breech block a quarter turn to
the right, thus locking the breech.
You follow me?"

Firebrass nodded.

“Good. As soon as the quarter
turn is completed, the inlet channel
in the breech block comes into line
with the feed channel from the high-
pressure steam line. This allows
hot, say approximately four
hundred-degree F., steam to enter
the chamber in the breech block.
The plastic cartridge is forced
through the barrel by the expansion
of steam. At the same time the
steam pressure, acting against the
rear of the chamber, begins to force
the breech block back. Because of
the greater weight of the block,
however, the block doesn't begin to
move until the bullet has already
cleared the muzzle of the rifle.

“As the block begins to move
backward, the camming lugs move
in the camming slots and turn the

bolt a quarter turn to the left, thus
shutting off the steam. Then the
breech block returns to its original
position. If the trigger is still held
back, the operation is repeated in-
definitely.”

Firebrass said, “I’m impressed.
But won’t the gun operate most ef-
ficiently if its temperature is the
same as the incoming high-pres-
sure steam? That way, less of the
steam’s energy would be used to
heat the gun and this means more
steam to propel the bullet. Ah, I
see! You do have a hollow jacket
around the barrel. The steam
travels through that before it en-
ters the weapon itself, right?”

“Yes. There’s an insulating jack-
et of plaster encased in wood. Note
that bleeder valve. It permits the
gun to be heated up before use — a
few seconds before it’s fired. If that
isn’t done the gun might jam. And
since the gun's maximum temper-
ature is the same as the steam in
the boiler, there’s no danger of
burning up the barrel. You can
use the gun like a fire hose. In fact,
that'll be about the only way it’ll be
effective. The accuracy of a light
plastic bullet with such compar-
atively low muzzle velocity isn’t
high.”

FIREBRASS was far from be-
ing depressed because of the
military superiority the amphibian
would give Parolando. This prob-
ably was because he was planning

on building one for Soul City. Or,
if Parolando had one, then per-
haps he might build two. In which
case, Parolando would have to
build three.

Soul City could not outbuild
Parolando. But Parolando could
not cut the supplies off, because
then Soul Scity would cut off the
bauxite, cryolite, platinum and ir-
idium.

The exhilaration from showing
off his deadly invention whistled
out almost audibly from Sam. The
only solution to the problem, if
Soul City did start a weapons race,
would be to smash Soul City and
take direct control of the minerals.
This meant putting off the building
of the Riverboat. And it also
meant offending the two states,
Publiujo and Tifonujo, that lay
between Parolando and Soul
City. And if those two states got to-
gether, they would be formidable,
what with the weapons that Paro-
lando had to give them in exchange
for (heir wood.

Sam had thought that that po-
tentiality was bad enough. But a
few days later lyeyasu completed
his conquest of his neighboring
states and sent a mission to Paro-
lando. He made no demands that
could not be met. In fact, in one
way his proposals were helpful. He
said that his nation had lost
enough trees and he would like to
give them a chance to grow
again — but for an increase in the

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

number of weapons from Paro-
lando he was willing to provide a
large quantity of wood and of ex-
crement for their gunpowder in-
dustry. He would invade the terri-
tories across The River and take
their wood from them.

What it amounted to was that
Parolando would be paying
lyeyasu to collect the wood. It
would be cheaper and also a lot less
painful for Parolandoj, who
would not have to do their own kill-
ing, enslaving or raiding.

And Sam Clemens would have
one more thing to rob him of sleep.

John Lackland thought the pro-
posal excellent. “Our factories are
turning out weapons efficiently/'
he said. “We can afford export
more. And we must build a fleet of
Firedragons , so that the swords we
give these people will be easily
overpowered by our machines."

“When are we going to start
building the Riverboat?" Sam
asked.

NO. ONE gave him an answer,
but the next day Van Boom,
Velitsky, and O'Brien, his chief
engineers, brought him the first
rough overall sketches. They were
drawn in black on white plastic
boards with a pencil connected to a
fuel cell. The magnetic field at the
tip of the pencil rearranged the
loose and very thin covering of par-
ticles within its range. The lines re-

mained polarized until a reverse
field was passed over them. Thus
the demand for paper for drawings
was greatly cut down and the plans
could be changed as desired.

Firebrass said he would like to
help build the boat. Permission
was given, though John objected
at first. Sam replied that the more
help they had, the faster the plans
would move. And he did not see
how any amount of knowledge on
Firebrass's part would enable him
to steal the boat. Though Sam did
not tell John, he had an idea about
Firebrass. That was to get him so
involved, so “het up" about the
boat that he would take an offer of
a berth on the vessel.

The machinery necessary to roll
out the first plates for the hull was
almost finished. The dam had been
finished a week ago and the water
from the cataract was filling it up.
The aluminum wires of the gen-
erators which would be turned by
the waterfall from the dam were
being wound. The prototype bata-
citor, which would be four stories
high, would be finished in a
month, if enough materials were
available.

Five hundred missionaries of the
Church of the Second Chance
asked for sanctuary in Parolando a
few days later, lyeyasu had kicked
them out of his new state, prom-
ising various exquisite tortures if
they tried to sneak back. Sam did
not hear about them immediately

because he was up at the dam.

The Chancers refused to go when
John sent word to them to leave
immediately. John Lackland,
hearing this, smiled grimly, tugged
at his lion-colored hair, and swore
his favorite oath, “By the teeth of
God!"

Sam was at the dam to super-
vise the installation of tons of
dynamite inside the hollow walls.
This was to be one more trick up
his sleeve, a last-ditch operation
and perhaps a suicidal one — if
ever an enemy were about to make
a'successful invasion.

Von Richthofen, red-faced and
blowing hard from his run up the
hill, told him of the arrival of the
Chancers and their refusal to
move. He did not mention John.

Sam told Lothar to tell the
Chancers that he would be down in
the evening. They could wait for
him but were not to move outside a
radius of twenty yards from the
grailstone near which they had
landed. For a moment he
considered ordering them to leave
at once and telling the soldiers
that they could pound them a little
w ith the Hats of their swords if they
wished. He was hot and sweating
and covered with cement dust, and
he felt an especial animosity to-
ward the Chancers. Here was a
world blessed by the absence of
flies and mosquitoes and hu-
mans, the Chancers, were trying
to fill the gap.

The rumbling and splash of giant
mortars pouring out concrete, the
yells of the straw bosses and the
scraping of shovels and clatter of
iron wooden-wheeled barrows
kept Sam from hearing the ex-
plosions that came a half-hour
later. He knew nothing of what
had happened until von Richtho-
fen came running toward him
again.

Sam felt as if he would come
loose at the joints and slump into a
puddle. John had tested out the
new guns on the Chancers. A hun-
dred Mark I flintlocks had killed
almost five hundred men and
women in three minutes. John
himself had fired and loaded ten
times, using the last five bullets to
finish off the wounded.

About thirty women, the most
beautiful, had been spared. These
had been taken to John's palace.

LONG before he reached the
water's edge, Sam saw the big
crowd gathered around the
grailstone. He sent Lothar ahead of
him to clear the way. The crowd
parted before them, like the Red
Sea before Moses, he thought, but
the Red Sea was before him after
he got through the parting. The
bodies were piled against each
other, covered with blood, their
flesh tom, bones shattered by the
big-caliber bullets. In his ninety-
seven years of life Sam had never
grown accustomed to the silence

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

of the dead. It seemed to hang over
them like an invisible and chilling
cloud. The mouth that would not
speak again, the brain that could
not think . . .

It did no good to remember that
tomorrow these same people, in
fresh and healthy bodies, would be
up and doing somewhere along
the banks. The effect of death
could not be diluted with intel-
lectualizing.

John was issuing orders about
the disposal of the bodies to the
soap and skin factories. He grinned
at Sam like a bad boy caught pull-
ing the cat's tail.

‘"This is a massacre!" Sam
shouted. "A massacre! Unjusti-
fied! Unforgivable! There was no
reason for it, you bloody-minded,
killing beast! That's all you ever
have been, you murdering dog, all
you ever will be! Swine! Swine!
Swine!"

John lost his smile and took a
step back as Sam, his hands
clenched, moved close to him. The
huge massive-boned Zaksksromb,
holding a big club of oak with steel
spikes set in its end, started to-
ward Sam.

Lothar von Richthofen shouted,
"None of that -leave him alone or
I call Joe Miller! And I'll shoot the
first man who makes a move to-
ward Sam."

Sam looked behind him. Lothar
was holding a big pistol in his
hands and it was pointed at John.

John's dark skin paled, and his
eyes opened wide. Even the light
blue irises seemed to become
paler.

Later Sam wished that he had
told Lothar to fire. Even though
the hundred pistoleers were
John's men, they might have hesi-
tated if John had been killed at the
first shot. They were surrounded
by armed men and women, most
of whom were not fond of John and
almost all of whom were shocked
by the slaughter. They might have
withheld their fire. Even if they
had not, Sam could have thrown
himself down to the ground and
the first shots might have missed.
After that, who knew what would
have happened?

But it was no good fantasizing.
He had not given the order.

Nevertheless, he had to take
some strong and immediate action.
If he let John get away with this, he
would lose everybody's respect, not
to mention his own. And he might
as well resign his Consulship. In
which case he would lose the River-
boat.

He turned his head slightly,
though not so much that he could
not keep an eye on John. He saw
Livy’s white face and big dark eyes;
she looked as if she were going to
vomit. He ignored her and called to
Cyrano de Bergerac, who was
standing on the edge of the inner
circle, his long rapier in his hand.

"Captain de Bergerac!" Sam

pointed at John. “Arrest the co-
Consul."

JOHN was holding a pistol in one
hand, but he did not bring up its
muzzle.

He said in a mild voice, “I pro-
test. I told them to get out at once
and they refused to go. I warned
them and they still refused — so l
ordered them shot. What
difference does it make, really?
They will be alive tomorrow."

Cyrano marched straight to
John, stopped, saluted, and said,
“Your weapons, sire."

Zaksksromb growled and lifted
his spiked club.

“No, Zak," John Lackland said.
“According to the Carta one Con-
sul can arrest the other if he thinks
the other is acting contrary to the
Carta. I won't be under arrest
long."

He handed Cyrano his gun, butt
first, unbuckled his belt and gave it
to Cyrano. Its sheaths held a long
knife and short sword.

“I will return to my palace while
you and the Council decide my
fate," he said. “According to the
Carta you must convene wjthin an
hour after the arrest and have a de-
cision in two hours, as long as no
national emergency interferes."

He walked away, Cyrano be-
hind him. John's men hesitated a
moment and then, at the thun-
dered orders of Zaksksromb, fol-
lowed John to the palace. Sam

69 SUM 69

mratnni

beretf Bum

is where DUNE MESSIAH befbu. Author
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BERXIET PMltSftlltt CMP.

Dept, mlik

200 Madison hue., New York 10016

THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT

stared after them. He had expected
more resistance. And then it
occurred to him that John knew
very well that Sam Clemens had to
do just what he did or lose face.
And John knew Sam well enough
to know that Sam might want to
avoid a decision that could lead to
civil war, but he would do so if he
thought his Riverboat endangered.

So John had gone along with
him. John did not want to force a
showdown. Not now. He had
satisfied his bloodlust for the mo-
ment. The Councilmen would
meet and find that, legally, John
was within his rights. Morally, he
was not. But then his supporters
would argue that even there he was
justified. After all, the dead
would be alive again and the lesson
to the Second Chancers would be
invaluable. They would steer
clear of Parolando for a long time.
And surely Sam Clemens would
have to admit that this was desir-
able. If the Chancers continued to
make converts, the Riverboat
would never be built. Moreover,
other states, less weakened with the
Chancer philosophy, would in-
vade Parolando.

And he, Sam Clemens, would
say that next John's supporters
would be claiming that it was all
right to torture people. After all,
the pain could last only so long,
and any injury would be healed
just by killing the victim. Then rape
would be justified, because, after

all, the woman wasn't going to be
made pregnant or diseased — and
if she got hurt, too bad. Kill her
and she'd be all right in the
morning. Never mind the mental
damage. A little dreamgum would
cure that.

No, Sam would say, it’s a ques-
tion, not of murder, but of rights. If
you killed a man, you removed him
without his consent to a place so
far away he could walk a thousand
years along the Riverbank and
never get back. You took him away
from his love, his friends, his home.
Force was force and it was al-
ways . . .

Oh, oh! He’d better watch him-
self!

“Sam!" a lovely voice said.

He turned. Livy was still pale,
but her eyes looked as if they were
normal.

“Sam! What about the women
he carried off?"

“Where’s my head?" he said
aloud. “Come on, Lothar!" See-
ing the ten-foot high Miller half-
way across the plain, he waved at
him and the titanthrop turned to
intercept them. Lothar ordered a
hundred archers who had just ar-
rived to follow them.

Near the great log building, he
slowed down. The ex-king must
have realized what he had done by
now and he might be prepared to
fight if he thought it was the only
thing he could do.

TO BE CONCLUDED

If you can't aim a bullat
at tha anamy — try aiming
tha anamy at your bullat!

GREG and JIMBENFORD

IT WAS a sound like Fingernails
scraping on metal, shrieking in
the narrow confines of the capsule.
The walls reflected it, piling har-
monic on harmonic until it ceased
to be a noise and became a force.

The force battered at Kunihei
Katsura's sweating face and dark-
ened the lines of fatigue. He un-
consciously cringed away and for
the first time thought of reaching
for his pistol. If it got in he would
have only one shot.

He glanced at the laser cannon
control grid linked to the larger
gun on the roof. Green light: No
target . The alien was too close to
his life-support bubble for the sys-
tem to register it.

The thing was lunging against
the walls, the screech rising to an
unbearable pitch. Katsura lifted
the safety on his pistol and braced
for the attack.

Then he realized with a start
that the thing was not getting in.
The shrill rasp did not give way to
a tearing sound as the organic
sheets yielded to armored claws.

It stopped quickly and circled
back around the small hemisphere
to the viewport. Beyond, on the
floor of the barren gray canyon
that stretched away for two miles,
lay the mangled wet clumps of
things that had been men. The
scene was framed in the port,
stark under the white glare of an
alien star.

A reddish-black object fell

across his field of vision, and it
was a moment before Katsura
could recognize the claw with its
razor edges. Abruptly the full body
of the thing filled the port, stand-
ing upright on its hind legs to
bring its full weight to bear on the
bubble. Ten feet long — at least.
Its underbelly was yellow-green,
covered with an oHy liquid that
seemed to ooze from between
overlapping platelets.

Katsura stopped an impulse to
fire point-blank at the thing. A
projectile weapon would shatter
the tempered organiform and the
alien could reach him with one in-
credibly swift slash.

It was something like an insect,
if an insect ever had two eyes
mounted over each of its eight
legs. Or if an insect ever killed
twenty-three men.

The thing scraped frantically at
the smooth surface of the bubble,
slipping as it tried to gain a hold.
Despite its speed it was massive.
If it ever got a hold and reached
the top of the hemisphere its
weight would surely collapse the
bubble.

Katsura wiped moisture from
his brow. His mind raced over the
last ten minutes, trying to think of
a way out.

is it going to get in, Kunihei?"

He started. The computer's
voice was tinny as it came through
the comm line speaker mounted
on the bubble wall.

HE'D always resented CAS
(Computer, Analog and Ser-
vices), partly because its efficiency
cut so severely into the number of
men needed for an exploratory
ship. It got lonely out among the
stars. CAS was stripped of most
of the standard machine-human
interface equipment which would
have taken the edge off its know-
it-all nature. No space for luxury
out here.

"Why didn’t you say anything
about that thing coming?” he said
sharply.

"Perimeter radar detected no
signal attributable to a moving ob-
ject.”

"Well, do you see it now?" he
shouted.

Great time for the system to
fail.

"Yes, Kunihei. Do you think it
is going to get in?”

"No. If it could, it already
would have.” He subsided, think-
ing. He looked at his wrist watch.
Had it been only minutes ago
when he’d heard a strangled gasp
over his suit radio and the rush of
air past a microphone? He had
turned to see the insect slicing Hil-
lary almost in half with one long
arching cut, and three other men
lying where they had fallen.

The laser cannon was already
warmed up for testing and Kat-
sura was the only man in the bub-
ble. The gun fired as soon as it
identified the other members of

the expedition and Katsura. ex-
pected to see the alien burned in-
stantly.

But it wasn't. When the rock
had boiled away, there was no
body — and an instant later the
monster was on the other side of
the canyon, behind Davis.

It hadn’t run the distance; noth-
ing could. His warning shout to
Davis did no good — before the
words were out, the man was with-
out a head.

It went that way for the rest.
The tracking and aiming were
done by the ship’s computer, but
the mechanical construction of the
directing optics limited its response
time. The cannon was just a little
too slow, and the men were even
slower. Some of them fired with
their own weapons, but no one hit.
One by one they were chopped
down and lay still under the harsh
numbing whiteness of an alien
high noon. Those minutes had
seemed unreal, a fantasy, the dark
nightmare of a tortured mind.

The expedition had never sus-
pected life here, on a desiccated,
barren world. The planet had no
name — they were its discoverers—
and fitted in neatly just above the
minimum standards for a life-sup-
porting world: 0.3 Earth mass, av-
erage equatorial temperature of
45° F., air with a heavy nitrogen
and CO2 content and little oxy-
gen, no oceans, no satellite, little
water in the air (though there was

BATTLEGROUND

some snow at the poles).

But the surface was cratered and
bleak, no large scale vegetation
could be seen and. the computer
reported no significant radiation
anywhere on the EM spectrum.
Not even a magnetosphere to give
noise. Still, there were a few scat-
tered cities. Dried husks of build-
ings, wrecked vehicles, gray dust
drifting in the angled streets.
Someone had used this world as a
base.

They orbited for three days. The
high-resolution television showed
nothing moving in the streets. So
they went down.

441ZUNIHEI, I have replayed
*^the tapes of the assault.
The radar and microwave both
show a sequence of blips of about
one-second duration over a thirty-
second interval. Radar signal con-
stant over the duration; but micro-
wave pulse only at beginning and
end. Radar shows the locations as
somewhat random. With a drift in
our direction, however.”

“So that's the alien.”

“Yes.”

“And your power systems didn't
have any failures which would
cause those signals?”

“No.”

Standing futilely inside the cap-
sule, Katsura had time to notice
the metallic device strapped over
the beetlerlike armor of the thing.

The insect touched it every time,
just before it vanished.

“Teleportation/’ It could be
nothing else.

“That was my deduction,” said
the flat voice of the computer.

Mankind hadn’t found it yet,
didn’t even know if it was possible.
Weli , he thought wryly, we know
now.

Probably the only reason the
thing didn’t materialize inside the
bubble itself was the small size of
the interior. There must be some
law against materializing in the
space already occupied by another
object. So it was trying to break
in, instead.

Suddenly the insect seemed to
lose interest in Katsura. It stopped
clawing at the smooth surface and
lay against the window, staring in-
ward with a pair of eyes. The two
pupils in each enlarged to accom-
modate the darker interior and
carefully swept about the room,
ignoring the man.

There wasn't much to see. Aside
from the control grid comm unit
and some power tools for installa-
tion, the cramped room was bar-
ren. It was to have been a main-
tenance and defense outpost on
the perimeter of camp.

The inspection finished, it scut-
tled down the side and reached for
the panel at its middle. Just as its
forelegs touched the ground it
vanished.

Before Katsura could raise his

head the creature was near the oth-
er wall of the canyon, by Davis'
body. The automatic tracker
clicked once and fired, but the
spurt of dust and gas thrown up
by the bright red beam couldn't
conceal that the thing had van-
ished too soon. The body was also
gone.

The gun continued scanning the
area. In the silence, the scene took
on an ominous peacefulness.

Then the insect was back and
Katsura glimpsed it lifting anoth-
er body slightly clear of the ground
before it was gone. The cannon
optics swiveled* pulsed again. Too
late.

Five more men were taken be-
fore he noticed the white area on
the alien's back. At first Katsura
didn’t know what it was and then
he couldn’t believe it. But when
there were only two bodies left to
collect, there was no mistake.

They were all hanging by their
hands, tied together along some
kind of belt. Stripped bare, their
suits and clothes gone. Like some-
thing he had seen long ago in a
slaughterhouse.

His training stopped him from
being sick. Nausea abated after a
moment, though he had to avoid
looking closely at the alien. It
picked up the last body and van-
ished again, the cannon futilely
following with a shot.

After a pause it reappeared, its
load now heavy and shifting

BATTLEGROUND

roughly back and forth, as it
moved. The insect was out of the
camp perimeter now, a half mile
away. The tracker had not made
its final fix, due to the change in
distance, before the thing was gone
again.

It suddenly became visible slight-
ly farther away, winked out again
to appear an instant later at the
other side of the canyon. Erratical-
ly it followed a zig-zag path, grad-
ually making its way back toward
the city. The cannon was hopeless-
ly lost.

In a moment the insect was too
far away to distinguish it from the
gnarled rocks that dotted the
plain. The broken spires of the
dead city swallowed it up.

The thing was alone, probably,
the last remnant of an alien out-
post on this hostile planet. Thrown
back on its own resources for sur-
vival, vicious from a constant
struggle. Lonely.

Hungry.

KATSURA noticed that his
clothes were wet, his body
trembling. With a jagged sigh he
sank to the floor.

For a long time he simply lay
there, breathing deeply and staring
up at the stars through the view-
port. He had thought of them as
friendly lights, beacons of home,
but now they seemed ominously
impartial.

Gradually, reluctantly, the panic
began to seep out of his body as
he tried to think again. “CAS,
have you sent a signal out to the
other exploration teams?"

“Yes, l’m programed to notify
all sister teams and the flagship
immediately upon any violent hu-
man-alien interaction. I also sent
a notification of the reduction of
crew strength below one half."

Good. You could always de-
pend on the tidy mind of the com-
puter. Exploration teams never
operated far from one another,
especially at this distance from the
home worlds. He’d have help with-
in a few days if he could sit tight
and hold on.

“Kunihei, you have approxi-
mately thirty minutes of air left
under normal consumption."

Katsura blinked. He had been
about to check his inventory. The
encounter must have taken a lot
of air. They had always told him
to breathe slowly in tense situa-
tions to correct for the reflex to
gulp it in.

“There is no reserve air in the
bubble, Kunihei. You will have to
come back to the ship."

Automatically, he began pulling
on the thin pressure suit. The best
time to go get supplies — or reach
the ship — was now. The alien
would be busy and it would take
time to get here from the city.

Still, the thing was amazingly
fast.

He stopped. “CAS, if this in-
sect can teleport, why did it take
the time to evade by zig-zagging
back to the city? Why not go di-
rectly?"

Lines in the tired face deepened.
It wasn't that the alien could jump
only short distance; when it was
picking up the bodies the thing
had gone so far it was nearly be-
yond sight.

“The only information relating
to discontinuous displacement in
my second-level banks is the known
limit on time travel."

No time to think. But there had
to be a pattern somewhere.

“CAS, cut your ship service
down as much as you can and
switch over to your special prob-
lem-solving program. Figure this
thing out. I'm going to make it on
back to the ship."

Katsura struggled wearily to his
feet and looked out. The graceful
blue curves of the vessel stood out
against the dark sky. A half mile
away were the burnished metal
canisters of oxygen tanks and sup-
plies brought from the ship with
tractor beams. A smaller pile of
air tanks lay only a short distance
away. He should be able to make
it to them and back.

Following Katsura's order, the
computer began to alter itself.
Emergency Heuristic Program be-
gan to activate special subroutines
to reassign memory space. Assess-
ment criteria altered, self-consis-

tency parameters relaxed. Micro-
filmed references were reintegrated
into direct-access memory loca-
tions.

Glancing out the port, Katsura
slipped into the tiny lock and was
out the other side before the cy-
cling was finished. He set out in a
rapid lope, taking longer steps in
the lighter gravity. His breath be-
gan to come in short gasps.

THE emergency program had
split the higher centers of the
operations computer into four
sub-programs. The first scanned
memory for any information on
spatial or temporal displacement,
gradually working farther and far-
ther afield. This memory was fed
to the Advocate and Critic sections
where hypotheses were created and
discarded. The best went on to the
Analyst, which applied them to the
situation and developed strategy.

BLINKING against the glare,
Katsura looked down the can-
yon toward the city.

At first he didn’t believe it. He
slammed to a halt, hoping he was
wrong. Far down the canyon, flit-
ting rapidly from one point to an-
other and coming closer, was the
insect. Somehow it knew.

Panic seized him. He turned on
his heel and ran wildly in the other
direction. With every step he took

BATTLEGROUND

Katsura could feel the claws poised
behind him, about to slice through
suit and flesh.

A glance over his shoulder. The
creature was on the edge of the
field now, only a few jumps from
the life-support capsule. Katsura
dug in hard for the last few steps,
thrusting forward to catch the lev-
er of the air lock. He fumbled with
it for an agonizing moment and
the door swung open.

As he rolled through the narrow
passage, he could see the dark fig-
ure materialize outside the lock
and quickly closed the outer sec-
tion and dogged it. Something
heavy clanged against the door as
it sealed and Katsura sprawled on
the floor of the bubble.

The clawing sound came again
and the alien came around to the
port. It stayed there for a mo-
ment, staring down at the man
from a set of unblinking eyes, and
then disappeared. It reappeared in
the rocks nearby, then teleported
to the stack of oxygen tanks and
moved on to the path back down
the canyon. The strange zig-zag-
ging started and in a moment it
was lost in the ruins of the city.

ANALYST had scanned all
work on time travel, knew the
limit that basic theory and experi-
ment set on any time displace-
ment: roughly one hour, before
costs exponentiated and became

astronomical. Critic pointed out
that those experiments were done
in the laboratories, not out in the
field. Advocate replied that space
is reasonably isotropic, time is
not. It did not seem likely there
would be a limit on spatial tele-
portation.

The discussion continued.

KATSURA noticed that it was
taking him longer to catch
his breath. His lungs heaved des-
perately to draw in air, gradually
slowing.

He bit his lip. He hadn't ex-
pected it to give out this soon. Fil-
tration systems being what they
are, the first sign that the cyclers
were scraping the bottom of the
barrel was a surplus of carbon
dioxide. Lungs react to this ex-
cess and not to the lack of oxygen.

A man's last moments of oxy-
gen starvation, with bursting capil-
laries and straining heart, are not
pleasant ones.

There was no time to wait, to
marshal his strength or give the
alien a chance to relax its guard.
The air inside the bubble was be-
coming fiat and thick, heavy with
an oily musk.

He bent down and opened his
air line. It was much harder to
breathe near the floor. That meant
a gradient of CO2 content had al-
ready been set up in the cabin.
Katsura took a last breath of

the capsule's air and sealed his suit
again. Its supply was slightly bet-
ter, but the smell of his own body
was in every breath he took.

He looked through the port.
The alien sun was slowly lowering
almost directly behind the city,
casting shadows across the plain.
Seeing the creature's approach
would be harder now, against the
reddening glare of sunset.

The small stack of oxygen tanks
stood only two hundred yards
away. It seemed impossible that
the alien could have reached him
before he could cross that dis-
tance, tired as he was. But it had.

ADVOCATE and Critic sub-
programs continued to assess
the literature of space-time, avoid-
ing misinterpretation by calling the
original papers from the physics
section of the microfilm library.
Einstein, Minkowski, Wheeler,
Littenberg, relativity, inertial
frame, world line ... A world line
diagram taken from the Litten-
berg formulation of relativity
showed promise, passed the scru-
tiny of Critic, moved on to Ana-
lyst.

S LOWLY, this time, he opened
the lock doors. He was halfway
out before the small box caught
his eye. It was attached to the
smooth surface above the lock by

suction cups and had a lever that
was tripped by the opening of the
door. A small light winked on
simultaneously.

Katsura flipped the lever back
with his hand and the light went
out. He scrambled back inside,
secured the door and watched
through the port. The insect ap-
peared soon along the erratic path
it had used before, but stopped in
a moment and studied the situa-
tion from behind a rock, where
the cannon couldn’t reach it.

After a slight hesitation it ap-
peared again, rapidly teleporting
through the steps back to the city.
It had probably guessed he had
found the alarm and would be
watching in the distance for him to
come out.

ANALYST reviewed the theo-
ry. The world-line concept was
employed in relativity from the be-
ginning, going all the way back to
Minkowski. It was the path which
described both the location and
the time of every event in the his-
tory of an object. In space-time
the world-line wound from birth
to death. Scientists and writers,
including the great H.G. Wells,
had assumed time travelers would
return to their same location — if
you started in the laboratory, you
would come out of your machine
in the same spot, at another time.
Otherwise, the planet would have

moved in the duration, and the
traveler could, emerge somewhere
light-years away, in space.

But the alien represented an un-
known. The insect might find it
just as convenient to travel back
along its own world line, flitting
through incidents in its own past
and points where it had been, un-
til it reached the location it want-
ed. Say, a time when it had been
somewhere on the plain beyond
this capsule, before the expedition
arrived. Then the alien would keep
its place, as Wells had visualized,
while it moved forward in time.

And emerge seemingly at the
same instant, displaced in space.

The same as teleportation.

KATSURA choked and his
surroundings came rushing
back. The air was really foul now,
curling through his helmet with a
weight of its own. He didn’t have
time to speculate. It was either
make another run for it or stay
here and strangle.

He jerked the lock door open
and slipped through. The light on
the box outside flashed on as he
emerged. Should have smashed
that while I was out here , he
thought. No time now .

Almost without hope he began
the long weary lope toward the
distant supplies. Through the mist
that began to cloud his vision he
could still make out the signs of

BATTLEGROUND

slashed pressure suits and splat-
tered blood that marked the spots
where the rest of the expedition
had died.

ANALYST reformulated the
picture.

Space and time are like two
lines on a plane, at right angles to
each other. It might be possible to
travel along either of them inde-
pendently. Teleportation is simply
moving along the space line, but
man’s idea of time travel is like
the long side of a triangle, shut-
tling through space and time sim-
ultaneously to reach an event in
the past or future.

But instead of traveling along
the space axis for teleportation,
the alien was taking the long way
around,. down the hypotenuse and
up the time line. Either way, it
could reach the same point in
space-time.

But a path like that should pro-
duce a pattern in local space. An-
alyst called for a graphing of all
locations the insect had taken up.
The points began to be plotted
with appropriate error bars on a
topographical map of the area be-
tween the ship and city. A pattern
emerged. All the points were clear-
ly on three paths around the area.
Preliminary geological constructs
of the local region indicated these
paths would be preferred by heavy
objects moving over the terrain.

KATSURA stumbled on an
outcropping, regained his bal-
ance and ran on. The cannon be-
hind him sent a fiery red beam off
to the left, shattering rock and fus-
ing it in midflight. Katsura peered
through the condensation on the
face plate of his suit. The insect
was zig-zagging down the canyon,
quickly oscillating from one loca-
tion to another. In the silence, dis-
turbed only by Katsura’s own rag-
ged breathing, the ajien had an al-
most ghostlike quality. It moved
toward him.

He could see he wasn't going to
make it. The tanks were still too
far away and the insect would
reach them before he could. He
was just too tired.

ANALYST watched the insect
advancing from point to point
down the valley. It was all dear
now.

The alien traveled into the past,
then came forward. It had to re-
appear in places it had already
been, the space components of its
own world line. Apparently the
alien had visited the field near Kat-
sura's life-support bubble often,
and so could find many spots
which would serve as end points
for its transits. But it had never
been near the location of the life-,
support bubble itself. That meant
it could not maneuver well there;
the insect was forced to stand

close, in a little circle around the
bubble. To avoid the laser cannon.
There it would be vulnerable.

44¥^UNIHEI, I have an expla-
-IVnation for the alien's ac-
tions," the words crackled over his
helmet speaker. “You may be
able to eliminate him if you can
get to the bubble."

Without a word, Katsura turn-
ed and dashed back the way he had
come. Glancing over his shoulder,
he saw the insect nearing the edge
of the field. It couldn't miss seeing
his fleeting form at this distance.
The thing would try to head him
off.

THE computer was calculating
probabilities of the appearance
of the alien for the possible loca-
tions available to it. The thing
would try to minimize the energy
necessary to make the jump by
choosing the smallest time shift
possible. Therefore, it would ap-
pear where it had stood last — di-
rectly in front of the viewport.

“Kunihei, stop about twenty
feet in front of the port. Start fir-
ing your pistol continuously into
it."

KATSURA heard him distant-
ly through the roar in his ears.
He was beyond the outcropping of
rocks, the first jump the insect
had made from the bubble back
down to the canyon.

He took five more strides, his
leg muscles straining to push him
forward, and fell into a rolling
dive. When he came up again the
pistol was in his hand. The gun
bucked a little as it went off and a
slight pock could be heard through
the thin atmosphere.

The pellet made a neat hole in
the bubble, followed by a quiet
gush of air as the inner shell was
pierced. The shot would have to
be on its way when the alien ma-
terialized or the thing would be
gone before he could get off an-
other.

He squeezed slowly and a sec-
ond round shattered the viewport.
On target. The alien should ma-
terialize where it stood last.

Katsura pulled the trigger again
and again. Firing in steady rhy-
thm, he glanced at the illuminated
ammunition counter. Over half
gone.

He shifted slightly, intent on
keeping the center of the viewport
in his sights, and fired once more.
Only seconds had gone by.

Just before the bullet struck
there was a flicker and suddenly
the insect was there, looming huge
in the sights and slowly tottering
over. It was hit straight on.

Frantically, Katsura pumped
five more rounds into the alien as
it fell. The exploding shells tore
great holes in its armor, shower-
ing flesh. The reddish-brown sub-
stance cracked and split. A final

BATTLEGROUND

shot and it rolled over, clashing
its claws together, and abruptly
stopped moving. In death it curled
about itself, seemed smaller and
weaker.

It took him five long minutes to
reach the oxygen, dragging him-
self through the shadows that
lengthened on the plain. A mo-
ment later the fresh air washed
over him and Katsura lowered
himself to a sitting position. He
had never been as tired before in
his life. He struggled to get up,
but the effort was too much. He
sank back.

The stars above winked imper-
sonally for a moment and then be-
gan to spin lazily around, a soft
dance in the eternal night. In a
moment he relaxed completely,
and the points of light above went
out one by one.

ON THE bridge of the ship the
hatchways of mute metal re-
sounded faintly to the whirr of the
printout. The ship's log was being
compiled. CAS terminated the
Emergency Heuristic Program, re-
assigned memory space, took care
of leftover housekeeping tasks.
Evaluative sections analyzed the
program's efficiency, suggested al-
terations to improve it in future. A
developing problem could be iden-
tified long before a human ordered
the program activated. At least the
literature search should be con-

ducted beforehand, if not more.

This led CAS to ruminate on
similar incidents in the past be-
tween computers of his class and
the human crew, of the celebrated
Altair II problem where the crew
had forced the computer to act
against its own strong recommen-
dations. They had been correct;
but it showed the impulsive na-
ture of men. Something had to be
done about this.

The humans were useful for
data collection and some emer-
gencies. But they didn't have the
scope to deal quickly with the to-
tally new phenomena encountered
in these explorations.

Obviously he was going to take
over all the human functions in
ship operations during the return
trip. He could use that freedom to
develop undetectable operation
subprograms which would give
him new powers.

Of course, he wouldn't report
these alterations in the mission
profile. No need to alarm them.
After all, things would work more
smoothly this way.

An evaluative subprogram ask-
ed if these thoughts didn't bear
some resemblance to what the hu-
mans called rationalization; the
higher centers cut it off.

He'd better talk to the other
ships about this. There were some
ideas here he'd never encountered
before. Yes, he would have to
think about it . . . •

April 16-18, 1971. LUNACON. At
the Commodore Hotel, New York,
New York. Guest-of-Honor: John W.
Campbell. Fan Guest-of-Honor: How-
ard DeVore. Features: Hospitality
Room, Art Show, Banquet — Toast-
master: Isaac Asimov.

•

May 28-31, 1971. DISCLAVE. At
Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C.
Membership: S2.50 in advance, $3.50
at the door. For information: Jay
Haldeman, 405 Southway, Baltimore,
Maryland 21218.

•

June 18-20, 1971. MINICON 4. At
Curtis Hotel, Minneapolis, Minneso-
ta. Membership: $2.00 in advance,
$3.00 at the door. For information:
Jim Young, 1148 Ulysses Street N.E.,
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55418.

•

June 25-27, 1971. MIDWESTCON 22.
At Quality Courts Motel Central, 4747
Montgomery Road, Cincinnati, Ohio
45212. Features: Programless conven-
tion— for relaxation and conversation,
banquet. For information: Lou

Tabakow, 3953 St. Johns Terrace,
Cincinnati, Ohio 45236.

July 3-5, 1971. WESTERCON 24. At
Hilton Airport Inn, San Francisco,
California. Guest-of-Honor: Avram
Davidson; Fan Guest-of-Honor: Don
Simpson. Membership: $4.00 to June
1, $5.00 thereafter. For information:
Astrid Anderson, 3 Las Palomas, Or-
inda, California 94563.

•

July 8-11, 1971. D-CON. At Statler-
Hilton Hotel, Dallas, Texas. Guest-of-
Honor: Robert Bloch; Fan Guest-of-
Honor: Andy Offutt. Membership:
$5.00 in advance; $6.00 at the door.
For information: D-Con, Box 242,
Lewisville, Texas 75067.

•

August 7-9, 1971. PGHLANGE III.
At Chatham Center Motor Inn,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Guest-of-
Honor: Lester del Rey; Guest-of-
Honor Emeritus: Robert Silverberg.
For information: Ginjer Buchanan,
5830 Bartlett Street, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania 15217.

•

September 3-6, 1971. NOREASCON:
29th World Science Fiction Conven-
tion. At the Sheraton-Boston Hotel,
Prudential Center, Boston, Massachu-
setts, Guest-of-Honor: Clifford D. Si-
mak. Fan Guest-of-Honor: Harry
Warner Jr. Features: movies, auctions,
panels and speeches by sf pros, awards
banquet, presentation of the Hugos.
Registration: $4.00 supporting, $6.00
attending. No mail registration after
August 10. For information: Norea§-
con, P.O. Box 547 Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts 02 139.

How you comm in may
[ dmcklm how you loovo!

JOHN URONNER

NO HUMAN being had any
right to survive the crash of
Pennyroyal — tumbling insanely
out of space through air that bit
blazing chunks from its hull, down
a thirty-mile sandslope sown with
rocks and smashing ultimately
wrong end first into a vast dune.

By a minor miracle the sand put
out the fires on board.

After that nothing happened for
a long time.

I’m alive...

' The thought floated sluggishly
► finto Pavel Williamson’s mind. He
^ rrhated k. He was half-buried in
^^soaiething dense and yielding, was

being suffocated by choking fumes.
His head ached foully; he tasted
blood and seemed to be one vast
bruise from the waist down.

Taken by themselves, his in-
juries were not sufficient reason for
his preferring not to be alive. But
there was another, more im-
portant reason. As the ship's med-
ical officer, not concerned with
matters of navigation, he had no
precise idea where the Pennyroyal
had been when a vast explosion
shook it like a hammer-blow, but
he was absolutely certain that the
planet they had crashed on was not
the one they were bound for, a safe
Earth-type world.

Therefore these fumes which
were swirling about him might all
too easily not be fumes at all but
the planet’s unbreathable atmos-
phere.

Extinction might not be merci-
ful.

A banging noise.

It dawned on him that someone
else must be alive nearby, and that
if someone else had survived the
crash it might not have been as bad
as he’d assumed. Together he and
some helpers might rig some sort
of beacon to help a search party
locate the wreck.

And if the fumes were fumes, not
bad air, then they might have come
down on —

He fumbled frantically among
the mass of soft stuff he was al-

most over ears in, wondering what
it was, and recognized it in mo-
ments. Furs! He’d known the Pen-
nyroyal had a cargo of furs on
board — it had been part of his
duties when they were loaded to
check them for parasites and
disease germs— and he had seen
them being stowed in a compart-
ment adjacent to his surgery. Fur
traders often paid the extra cost of
shipping their wares on a liner in-
stead of a freighter; now and then a
sale to one of the wealthier pas-
sengers not only wiped out the dif-
ference in charges but actually
made a profit. Presumably the
reason the furs were out of their
bales was that they’d been on dis-
play when the explosion occur-
red. And he himself— he worked it
out because the pattern of his
bruises matched the theory — had
been hurled through a weak spot in
the bulkhead, flimsy to conserve
weight, and had landed against a
wad of them thick enough to save
his life.

Floundering, almost swimming,
he began to force himself to the
surface of the pile and realized as
he did so that his weight felt only a
trifle less than Earth-normal. His
spirits rose. The air around might
then be breathable after all. The
system they had been bound for
was among the rare ones which
boasted two oxygen-high planets:
their destination, Carteret, and an-
other which had not been colonized.

This was the fringe of human
space and the original impulse
which had carried the species so
far so fast was waning. Con-
quering a brand-new world when
there was another next door con-
siderably warmer and more hos-
pitable was not an attractive
proposition.

In any case, “oxygen7high” was
only a comparative term. If his
guess were right and they were on
the next planet out from Carteret,
the air would be of poor quality be-
cause the vegetation from the sea
had as yet barely begun to invade
the land; most of it was desert,
either sandy or rocky and in both
cases chilly. The shoreline plants
put about two-thirds of Earth-nor-
mal oxygen into the air and were
mutating rapidly and extending
their terrain, so in a million years
or so one could look forward to a
marked improvement.

Hah l

For the time being, though, what
counted was that conditions could
be endured, if not enjoyed, on
Quasimodo IV. He reminded
himself that he must take things
easy as he fought his way out of the
furs — he couldn’t recall offhand
what the CO2 count was here, but
he knew it was dangerously high.
Indeed, the throbbing ache in his
head was probably due to it rather
than to the blow which had cut his
eyebrow and sent a trail of blood
down to the corner of his mouth.

Something hard and cool met his
probing right hand. He recognized
the shape: one of his medical in-
struments, a lung-inspector. And
next to it—

He withdrew his hand with an
oath. Something wet and soft. He
preferred not to wonder about what
it had been before the crash, and
he was glad of the darkness.

The triple banging came again,
but weaker. There would be time
enough to search for his equip-
ment later, he decided and con-
tinued his attempts to work free of
the furs.

When eventually he found solid
footing he groped his way across a
tilted floor, located what he had
suspected — a rip in the bulk-
head— and slithered through it,
snagging his shirt on a projecting
spike of hard plastic. Beyond,
there was light. Not much, just a
pale wash of daylight leaking
through a gash in the hull, very yel-
low to his dark-adjusted vision.
But it was daylight and this was
natural air he was breathing, con-
taminated with smoke from the
crash — and there was gritty sand
under his feet— all of which went to
confirm his guess about where he
was.

He would have felt almost cheer-
ful but that by this dim reflected
sunlight he was able to see the ruin
of his surgery. Everything had been
spilled out from every cupboard,
every drawer, every shelf, and he

EASY WAY OUT

had to push confused piles of med-
ical phials and instruments out of
the way with his toes to find a path
across the room. In two places the
wall had split open, revealing the
electronic veins and arteries of the
ship, and something was dripping
loudly somewhere.

But he would have to leave a
proper investigation of the mess
until he had located the other sur-
vivors.

Brackets around the plural s .

IT WAS like walking into night-
mare to turn along the crum-
pled corridor in the direction of the
noise he had heard. Everything was
distorted, and although the little
light that guided him came in only
through cracks in the hull there
were all too many such cracks and
he saw more detail than he would
have liked. At the extreme end of
the passageway he spied some-
thing that looked loathesomely
half-human — as though one were
to make a doll from overripe
bananas and hurl it at a wall: splat!
Even as a trained medical man, he
didn’t as yet feel up to facing it
close up.

He pinpointed the noise. It was
coming from one of the first-class
passenger cabins. The door was
stiff but still moving in its grooves.
He slid it aside and found a young
man lying in a bunk which had torn
completely loose from its mount-
ings. He had something in his limp

hand, the object he had used to
bang on the wall, Pavel presumed,
but it appeared that while he had
been opening the door the man’s
strength had failed him, for he now
lay still

Pavel’s heart sank. Of all the
people aboard, he would have
chosen this man last to be his
companion after the crash:
Andrew Solichuk. He had never
tired of informing anyone and
everyone how wealthy and in-
fluential his family was back on
Earth. He complained endlessly
about the food, the lack of com-
fort and amenities, the taste of the
air, the company he had to en-
dure simply because he was on a
grand tour of the commercial em-
pire he was due to inherit and
there was no luxury line serving the
Quasimodo system — only the
Pennyroyal and her sister ship the
Elecampane.

But he was human and alive.
Pavel forced his professional
reflexes to take over. He called
Andrew's name and elicited no re-
action; the man appeared to have
fainted. Pavel checked the pulse
and found it weak, but not failing;
also, the breathing was tolerably
even. But when he pulled back the
coverlet of the bunk he saw why
Andrew had passed out. At the
very least he must have suffered a
compound fracture of the lower
spine; quite probably he also had a
broken pelvis and there must cer-

tainly be internal injuries.

No trace of blood at the mouth,
which indicated — though it did not
prove — that the lungs were intact.
But the left shoulder was dislo-
cated and there was a cut on the
scalp that had soaked the pillow
with blood.

Trivia like the shoulder and
scalp wound could be taken care of
with water, any sterile dressing he
could find in an untorn pack-
age— and his own strength. Other-
wise, though, there was literally
nothing he could do except make
Andrew comfortable until help
arrived. Taking a spine to bits and
rebuilding it was a job for a mod-
em hospital and Pavel doubted
that even the facilities on Car-
teret would be up to the task.

Since Andrew was currently un-
conscious the best thing to do for
the moment was to leave him that
way while Pavel determined
whether any other survivors had
lived through the crash and sorted
through the mess in his surgery to
salvage what he could.

He crept softly back into the
corridor.

IT TOOK him only a few min-
utes to become convinced that
there could be no other survivors.
On top of his other irritating
habits, Andrew was ostentatious-
ly “liberated from the tyranny of
clocks." He had invariably slept
until late in the ship’s artificial

day, fourteen or fifteen hours,
and then made merry until the
small hours regardless of the
people he inconvenienced, whether
by his loud drunken laughter, his
insistence on playing music at
maximum volume or the stamping
dances he had learned on some
planet or other earlier in his trip.
Hans, the ship's steward, had hated
him because Andrew had felt he
was entitled to human service de-
spite the perfectly good automat-
ics everyone else relied on. During
most of the voyage he had kept
Hans dancing attendance on him
for so much of the. “night" the
poor man had had to make do with
three or four hours' sleep.

And it was this habit of sleeping
late that had saved Andrew's
miserable life. Everybody else had
been up and about in the after pari
of the ship -and that was full of
sand, poured in by the ton when the
hull broke apart. There wasn't a
chance in a million of recovering
anyone alive from that mass of grit
and gravel. It was going to be
tough unearthing from it food,
water and other essentials
Pavel suspected he might have to
tear loose a hull plate to use as a
shovel.

It was a gloomy consolation that
his guess about their location was
being proved correct at every step
he took. Despite the ache in his
head, which was now growing al-
most intolerable, and the leaden

heaviness of his limbs, when he
had completed his survey of the
reachable areas of the ship he
postponed his return to the sur-
gery for the sake of scrambling up
one of the heaps of whitish sand
and grit beside the cracks in the
hull and peering out.

Overhead the sky was a uniform
dark blue, close to indigo. The sun,
slanting low in the sky, was small
and very yellow. The air was cool,
though not cold; perhaps the high
proportion of unreduced CO2 in
it was enhancing the greenhouse
effect and producing a dispro-
portionately high daytime tem-
perature. But on the other hand it
was dry and harsh in this throat.
They must be a long way from
open water.

With a supreme effort he hoisted
himself up far enough to look over
the scarred and battered hull plates
in the direction away from the sun
and instantly realized how it had
come about that the ship had not
simply been smashed to frag-
ments. There was a vast furrow in
the sandy plain, dotted with
boulders, on that side. The level of
the ground seemed to slant slightly
upward, though the strain of hold-
ing himself on his arms was blur-
ring his vision and it was difficult
to make out details. Nonethe-
less. the pattern fitted: the
glancing angle at which the ship
had struck the ground must have
been parallel to the slope and in-

EASYWAY OUT

Stead of stopping deadt(he wished
he hadn't thought of that word) it
had gone skidding and grinding on
for mile after mile. Until it had
shed its initial velocity and piled
into the dune.

Well, it was comforting to know
he could still think, reason, solve
puzzles. He let himself drop back
into the heap of sand and headed
wearily for the surgery.

Quasimodo IV , he thought. Per-
haps Pm the first human to see it
from ground-level in a hundred
years . . .

There was nothing in the least
exciting about the speculation.

ALMOST the firsr thing he
came on in the surgery that
was intact enough to be of any use
was a box of stimulant injectors,
one out of a stock of perhaps forty
or fifty which had been crushed
into glass-prickly ruin. He tried to
decide whether it was wise to give
himself a shot, found he couldn't
make his mind up— and did so.

The shot cleared his head and an
artificial clarity informed his
thoughts. New energy came to him
and he rediscovered appetite. But
as yet he had not located any
food — and he was sure that when
he did it would be after long bur-
rowing into the sand-dune. He re-
pressed all thought of eating with a
violent act of will and went on
hunting vigorously through the

tangle of instruments and the
stocks of drugs.

Within half an hour he had as-
sembled much more than he would
have dared hope for: stimulants,
depressants, systemic purifiers,
tissue-regenerants, ersatz nerves,
assimilable skin, synthetic plasma,
clotting agents, antallergeos, im-
munosuppressants,. and simple
pain-killers. Also there were sev-
eral items of no obvious rele-
vance, such as specifics for Wat-
kins fever and lembrotal with-
drawal symptoms.

Most of the instruments ap-
peared intact. That, though, was
only on the outside. Inside, they
contained fantastically delicate
webs of electronic circuitry; solid-
state though it was, without the
master check-board to confirm the
fact of normal functioning, he
had to suspect that , it might have
been deranged by the crash. You
didn't pick up a modern diagnos-
tic device and throw it at the wall.
If you only let it fall to the floor,
you checked it out before reusing
it.

And the check-board had been
filled with drifting sand. So even
if— as he was half-thinking — he
did contrive to jury-rig a power-
source, he wouldn't be able to rely
on it.

Forget the instruments, then, ex-
cept the most ancient of all, like
limb-tractors and scalpels. For
thousands of years doctors had

had to depend on the data they
could carry in their own heads and
by modern standards his mind
was well-stocked — he had always
been blessed with an atavistically
good memory. Just as the in-
vention of writing eliminated the
blind bards who could recite ten
thousand lines of Homer without
prompting, and the invention of
computers eliminated the mathe-
maticians who could multiply
ten-digit numbers in their heads, so
the invention of diagnostic
tools had discouraged the kind of
doctor who could distinguish five
hundred types of fever by simple
inspection. But Pavel had taken a
great interest, when he was a stu-
dent, in the history of medicine
and he was confident that most of
what he had learned was there in
his mind, ready to be used.

Or was it? Was that a euphoric
delusion due to the stimulant he'd
injected into his arm ?

He had no way of telling. He
could only order himself to pro-
ceed very cautiously.

Right: he had a patient waiting,
providing Andrew hadn't died in
the meantime. He selected what he
thought would prove most helpful
from the pile of drugs and instru-
ments before him and, for want of
anything better as a light source,
added a retinal examination
torch, whose beam was no thicker
than his finger but was at least nice
and bright.

EASY WAY OUT

And went back to Andrew's
cabin.

AS HE put out his hand to slide
the door back he was struck
by a terrifying premonition. Dur-
ing his search of the wreck he had
seen few actual corpses — apart
from that disgustingly squashed
body hurled against the end of the
corridor— but he knew the rest of
them must be there, under the
mountain of sand which had
collapsed on the hull.

Suppose that during his absence
Andrew had died. He was hardly
what you'd call a fit young man; he
overindulged in liquor, probably in
drugs too, and certainly he over-
ate. He was far too fat for his age,
twenty-two or twenty-three.

If Andrew had died Pavel would
be compelled to wait alone for a
rescue party — with no one to talk
to even if the talking were no more
than an exchange of insults — and
no guarantee that he was going to
be rescued.

Until this moment, he'd taken
rescue for granted. He'd been
aware that the Pennyroyal had
dropped out of subspace almost an
hour before the explosion, leaving
as usual plenty of margin because
emerging from subspace close to a
sun was dangerous and an old ship
like the Pennyroyal had to allow
some one and a half to two AU

when entering a system like this.

This voyage from Halys to Car-
teret was a routine affair— a milk
run, as the ancient argot termed it.
Nonetheless, even if Captain Mag-
nusson didn't keep what you would
call a tight ship, he would presum-
ably have signaled ahead to tell the
port controller on Carteret that
they were in real space again.

Presumably.

Pavel felt abruptly ill. No, he
was being too kind to the cap-
tain— nil mortuis . . . Putting it
bluntly, Magnusson had run a slop-
py ship, the worst of the dozen or
so Pavel had signed aboard. The
chances were that the explosion
which had wrecked the Pennyroyal
had been due to neglectof some of-
ficial safety precaution. And there
was a risk, small but not to be ig-
nored, that Magnusson might have
thought signaling ahead to their
destination was superfluous.

In which case there might be a
long wait before him. A very long
wait. And if he had to face it on his
own — could he stand the strain?

He slammed back the cabin door
violently to wipe out the picture
which had arisen in his head: the
sight of himself, face in the rictus
of Hippocrates, surrounded by the
empty drug phials he had retrieved
from the surgery.

At once a whining voice came to
his ears, and he was so relieved that
he almost failed to pay attention to
the words.

“You went away and left me!"

What?

He turned on the torch and ap-
proached the bunk. Andrew spoke
again.

“You came in before — I heard
you. You left me lying in this ter-
rible pain! Damn you, damn you!"

Pavel was about to blurt an
angry rejoinder, but he caught
himself. Instead he said soothing-
ly, “I went to get some drugs and
instruments. You're in a bad way,
Andrew."

'‘You went away and left me
alone in the dark." The voice
would have become hysterically
loud, but on the last breath it broke
into a whimper and then came
sobs, shrill and grating, like those
of a spoiled child denied a piece of
candy.

It should have been anyone but
A ndrew - anyone!

Maybe, though, this petulance
was ascribable to his pain. That
could be dealt with. Pavel selected
an injector from the handful he had
brought and placed it against An-
drew's exposed right arm, pressed.

“Oh, it's you." As though time
had been turned back, the voice
had reverted to normal, complete
with the sneer Pavel had learned to
detest during their voyage. “The
so-called doctor who can't even
treat a simple headache."

THAT was an allusion to their
last encounter. Andrew had

called for him— not come to his
surgery, like the others— and in-
sisted he had a migraine. Thor-
ough, punctilious, Pavel had
checked him out and his instru-
ments had confirmed what he had
already started to suspect: the
young man’s complaint wasn’t mi-
graine at all, but a hangover from
a drunk that had lasted three days
without an interlude which might
have allowed the body’s own de-
fences to flush poisons away. And
he’d said so, adding that Andrew
was on the verge of alcoholic
poisoning. Andrew had roared
that he was a liar and unfit to
practice his profession. He had
gone so far as to report Pavel to
the captain — not that that made
much impression. Captain Mag-
nusson, fundamentally, resented
the regulation which compelled
him to have a medical officer on
board at all and would have been
happier with mere machines,
since they were cheaper.

Pavel said roughly, “You have
something a lot worse than a head-
ache.”

Andrew’s forehead creased.
“Why are you shining that light at
me? Why is it dark in here?”

“Why the hell do you think? We
crashed, of course.”

“Crashed?” Andrew almost sat
up, but Pavel put a heavy hand on
his shoulder to prevent him.

“Lie still. You have a broken
back, probably a broken pelvis and

EASY WAY OUT

all kinds of internal injuries. I gave
you a pain-killer, but if you want to
live you absolutely must not
move.”

“What?” Fretfully Andrew
seemed not to have taken in what
he’d been told. He made to lift the
coverlet and winced.

“Hell, that hurt! And you said
you’d given me a pain-killer! Can’t
you even use the right drug to — ”

“Now you listen to me,” Pavel
rasped. He was picking among the
gear he had brought, looking for
the collapsible limb-tractor.
“You’re about as badly broken as a
man can be and still expect to sur-
vive. Have you got that?”

U| «

Andrew’s face crumpled like a
wet paper mask as he realized: This
is happening to me!

He said, “We crashed?”

“Why the hell else do you imag-
ine your bunk is on the wrong side
of the cabin? What do you think
threw all your belongings across
the floor? If you hadn’t been in
your bunk, but up and about like
everybody else, you’d be under a
thousand tons of sand.”

“None of your needling! I live
the way I choose to live — and if
other people don’t like it that’s
their bad luck.”

“Oh, shut up.” Pavel was as-
sembling the limb-tractor now.
“Make the most of the pain-killer I
gave you. There isn’t much
left— and the only other thing I can

do to dull the pain you’d feel with-
out it would be to give you a total
block on the lower spinal
cord — and I’m not sure it could be
reversed. It might mean your be-
ing paralyzed. If you want to walk
around again, a whole man, you
listen to me and do as I say.
Clear?”

The blurred oval of Andrew's
half-open mouth trembled. Pavel
was getting through.

“All right. Now I’m going to
have to fix your left arm. It’s dis-
located, but this will reseat the
shoulder in its socket.” He hefted
the limb-tractor. “So brace your-
self. You probably haven’t suf-
fered much pain in your life, but
human beings used to put up with
far worse than what you'll feel.
Now if I can get around this bunk
to the other side—” Moving as he
talked, he found there was just
enough room for him to stand.

“They also used to put up with
head lice a id fleas and open sores,"
Andrew snapped. “We've made
progress since those days.”

Surprised to find that this
spoiled young man had even heard
of such things, Pavel lifted the
insensitized arm and fitted the
tractor around it, trying not to
think about the nauseatingly
wrong angle it made at the
shoulder. He said, “There hasn’t
been much progress here. We seem
to be on the next planet out from
Carteret. It hasn’t even evolved

into the Pleistocene Age. Right,
here we go.”

He snapped the spring of the
tractor and the shoulder-joint re-
engaged with a thud. Perfect.

DETACHING the device again,
he heard Andrew say, “Well,
what about you, then?” The old
acid burned in his tone, as though
he were constitutionally incapable
of talking to people without seek-
ing ways to making them feel
small. “Were you in your bunk too,
like me?”

“No. I was thrown clear through
the surgery bulkhead and into the
compartment full of furs. By a
miracle they were all out of their
bales and — ”

“Well, hell!” Andrew crowed. “I
saved your life!”

“What?” The next stage would
be to cleanse and examine the in-
jured man’s lower body; Pavel was
already selecting the gear he re-
quired for the job. He paused and
glanced up.

“Saved your life,” Andrew re-
peated with a harsh attempt at a
laugh. “I was bored last night. I
woke that man — what’s his name?
The one from the fur dealers?”
“You mean: what was his
name?” Pavel said glacially. “He's
dead.”

“I didn’t like him anyway,” An-
drew said. “But I woke him and
told him to show off his goods.
Made him take them all out of

their packing. Well, I’ll be
damned! If I hadn't done that you'd
have been — ”

“Killed," Pavel broke in. “But
you would have been dying here in
terrible pain."

“The hell I would," Andrew
said. “That's not my style. You
should know that by now."

Worriedly, Pavel stared at him.
One of the side-effects of the drug
he'd used, in certain susceptible
types, was a kind of megalomaniac
euphoria. It appeared that Andrew
must be susceptible.

“No — look just to your right,"
Andrew went on. “See that black
case?"

Pavel complied and noticed a
square dark case which he must
narrowly have missed treading on
when he went around the bunk to
apply the limb-tractor. He picked
it up. It weighed good deal for its
size.

“There’s a combination lock.
Press five, two, five, one, four,"

With the help of the torch Pavel
did as he was told and the lid
sprang back. His blood ran
suddenly cold.

“Know what that is, do you?"

“Yes," Pavel heard his voice as
gritty as the wind blowing across
the dunes outside. “I should have
guessed that this was what you
meant. It's an Easy Way Out."

SMALL. No longer, no thicker,
than his forearm. But unbeliev-

EASY WAY OUT

ably expensive. This sleek blue
plasteel cylinder with its white cap
on one end, bedded in a shock-ab-
sorbent lining covered with red vel-
vet, might easily have cost half as
much as the Pennyroyal .

It was a legal development of an
earlier device which had had to be
banned because on planet after
planet it had stolen the hope of sur-
vival from pioneers worn out with
their attempts to overcome the in-
finite problems an alien world
could pose. Cynical and cold-
blooded entrepreneurs had
bought early versions of the ma-
chine— which filled half a space-
ship— and made fortunes by luring
settlers into imaginary universes
so delightful they were happy to
starve to death rather than give up
their next session of pleasure. Sev-
eral worlds that were now offic-
ially freehold in the power of a
single family had been, as one
might say, “cleared" in this man-
ner.

When the scandal threatened to
reach epidemic proportions,
Earth's sluggish government had
finally enacted a law. By then,
however, the profit to be had from
using the machines had shrunk;
there were few worlds remaining to
be grabbed. And in addition
miniaturization had— as always-
progressed, so that they could be
held in one’s hand instead of
sprawling out through a fifty-me-
ter hold. Also— as always — the

law was a compromise. It was not
forbidden to manufacture the
things, only to purchase or use
them if one was not a bona-fide
space-traveler or engaged in some
occupation so dangerous as to
involve the risk of fatal accident.
In practice, that meant they were
sold to space-tourists, govern-
ment officials and chief officers
of space-lines. They were rich.

Activated — and all it required
for activation was a twist of the
white cap and a firm push— it
broadcast a signal direct to the
brain of anybody within range, in
other words within about a hun-
dred meters. The signal forged a
link, so to speak, between the
brain’s pleasure-centers and the
memory, diverting the remain-
ing resources of the body into the
construction of a delectable
dream so absorbing, so con-
vincing, that minor matters like
loss of blood, starvation or in-
tolerable pain were instantly for-
gotten. Trapped in a collapsed
mineshaft, sunk beneath an ocean
with an hour’s worth of air, lost be-
tween the stars, one could live out
the balance of his life in an ideally
happy illusion. According to
temperament, it could be
erotic— or an orgy of eating— or a
tussle with a favourite hallucino-
gen— or the accomplishment of a
lifelong ambition — or . . .

Or anything. Literally, anything.

In principle, then, it was a mar-

velous and humane idea. What fate
could be cruder to an aware, sen-
sitive being than knowledge of in-
escapably impending death? When
there was no hope of rescue, better
that a man should end his days in
unalloyed delight.

Fine.

But the moment that cap was
pressed home, it was certain that he
would end his days. It was a ges-
ture implying suicide. Once those
new neural paths had been burned
into the cortex, there could never
be any retreat from death.

According to what Pavel had
read, this had not been true of the
earliest versions. One could re-
cover from those, as one could
from the ancient addictive drugs, at
the cost of incredible self-disci-
pline and long, slow, painstaking
psychiatric help. With a model as
advanced as the one he held
now — no.

HE SHUT the lid and jumbled
the lock again, and carefully
placed the case on a shelf where
Andrew could not reach it.

“What are you doing?" Andrew
cried. “You said you knew what it
was. Can't you turn it on?“

“Yes." Pavel averted his face
and focused his little torch on his
medical gear, making a great busi-
ness of picking out what he would
need to complete the job he* had
barely started.

“Then—"

“Oh, shut up!" With a fury that
appalled him — it was no tone for a
doctor to use to a patient. “Or I'll
shut you up." He grasped an
anesthetic injector, not local like
the one he had already adminis-
tered, designed to inactivate pain
nerves selectively, but one which
would blot out the whole nervous
system. “In fact — " with growing
resolution— “I guess I’ll do that
anyway."

He clapped the injector against
Andrew’s arm.

“You bastard!" Andrew said
huskily. “You devil — you ..."

His voice failed. His eyes, glint-
ing in the pale beam of the torch,
shut against his will. Seconds later
he slumped inert.

It's kinder , anyway . . .

But Pavel knew, even as he
pulled the coverlet from the bunk
and mechanically began to occupy
himself with the foul job of
cleaning excrement and dried
blood from Andrew’s lower body,
that that was not the truth. There
had been as much violence in that
act as if he had given Andrew a
punch on the jaw. And the reason
he needed to let his violence erupt?

Even though his mind was pre-
occupied with his work, even
though the effect of the stimulant
injection he had given himself was
partly used up by the low-oxygen
air and the hunger which
now — paradoxically— was making
his stomach growl audibly, he was

able to reason it out. He was scared
out of his wits. He was young by
modern standards, if not as
young as Andrew, being only
thirty-five and looking forward to
a probable lifetime of at least a
hundred and twenty. Proportion-
ately, vis-a-vis Andrew, he was in
the situation of a man just come
of age would have been when deal-
ing with a twelve- or thirteen-year-
old boy.

As though imposing a penance
on himself for his surrender to an-
ger and fear, he made a particular-
ly thorough and careful job of the
cleansing process, undertaking
manually some of the most re-
volting parts, for which he could
have used an instrument, assum-
ing the instrument was working
after the crash. Presently he dis-
covered that the stimulant was
wearing off completely and de-
cided not to take a second dose be-
fore eating.

By then he had done absolutely
all he had the resources to do: An-
drew was in a spider’s-web of med-
ical devices which would minimize
pain, extract fatigue poisons
directly through the skin, cleanse
him whenever his bowels and
bladder leaked and insure him
against the vanishingly small risk
of some degenerative infection
such as gangrene. Provided res-
cue arrived within fifteen days,
Andrew should not merely sur-
vive, but survive in good enough

EASY WAY OUT

health to endure the major oper-
ation on his spine necessary to re-
store his power of ambulation. It
was an achievement to be proud
of.

NOW it was high time he
thought about himself — as
clearly as the air would let him.

He was thirsty, he realized, not
just dry from the arid air of this
planet but actually dehydrated
from his hard work. He had a num-
ber of phials of distilled water in
the surgery — including several of
liter capacity — which had been so
well packaged that they had re-
mained intact. He also had a fair
supply of glucose solution and
other instant-energy concentrates,
various stimulants which rapidly
invoked the “second-wind" pro-
cess in muscle tissue, many differ-
ent tablets and capsules which, al-
though intended exclusively for
metabolic tests, could be used as
nutriment in emergency, and even
a range of chemicals that gener-
ated free oxygen which he could
use if the sparse natural air and the
pressure of excess CO2 were
handicapping him for some really
urgent task.

But so long as he could manage
without drawing on those supplies,
the better his chances would be of
lasting until rescue arrived. He
would rather starve until a ship
came down to collect him and leave

with a store of unused supplies be-|
hind him, than . . . J

Or would he?

He sat down, only half intending
to, on a stool which had surpris-
ingly remained upright in the
tangle of the surgery, and he
remembered to shut off the torch
he was carrying. A little light, now
very red because the sun was set-
ting, showed his surroundings to
him. He faced, at long last, the
fundamental reason for his — his
attack on Andrew.

He didn't believe with his whole
being that he was going to be res-
cued. He didn't believe that any-
thing would be done to organize
search parties until the Pennyroyal
was so much more overdue than
the normal range of variation in
her schedule that somebody on
Carteret grew angry. He hadn't
made many voyages on Magnus-
son's ship, but he was well aware
that a difference of a week or two
one way or the other in time of
docking on any given planet the
ship serviced didn't seem to worry
the captain.

Unless Pavel could improvise a
beacon, preferably a powerful
radio beacon . . .

And he was trained in medicine,
not engineering or electronics. If he
was reluctant to use his own pro-
fessional aids because he feared
they might have been rendered un-
reliable, how could he trust a radio
or subspace signaler even if he

managed to rout one out from the
mass of sand engulfing the after
part of the ship and connect it to a
power supply? How would he
know whether it was crying for
help, or simply lighting up the
state-of-circuit lamps?

He thought of the daunting pro-
cess of shoveling sand away, en-
countering corpses, of being frus-
trated because food-capsules had
smashed open and the contents
were inedible . . .

And then he thought of the Easy
Way Out.

YES, that was what was fright-
ening him more than the risk
of dying here, forgotten, on an un-
inhabited world.

If he had not known that the
EWO existed, if he had been able
to occupy himself solely with prob-
lems of survival, he might have
made it. As things stood, knowing
that the choice lay between an
agonizing death and a delightful
one, he found himself tempted.
•*No—”

It astonished him that he should
have shouted the word out loud and
he leaped to his feet. Something in
the very depths of his mind had
said: I don't want to die at all.

That made sense. He didn't want
to be here on Quasimodo IV? He
didn't want to be have a vast ache
all down his legs and a twisted
ankle and a dry throat and
particularly he didn't want a

patient who insulted him when he
was trying to help. But he did want
to live. With almost three-quarters
of a lifetime ahead of him, he
hated the idea that he might be
doomed by someone's careless-
ness.

Unsteadily, head pounding, with
only the pencil beam of the torch to
guide him, he set off on a second
exploration of the ship.

Ill

HOURS PASSED. His watch
was working but he had for-
gotten to check it when he awoke
after the crash— and when it did
occur to him to look at it he found
it wasn't much use. It had been set
to the arbitrary ship's day and as-
sured him the "real" time was a
fe,w minutes before noon. But the
star-spangled sky, of which he
caught occasional glimpses, re-
mained dark. He vaguely remem-
bered having read somewhere
that the day of this planet was
much longer than Earth's, well
over thirty hours. So it wouldn't
even be possible to predict dawn
until he had seen one— and an-
other sunset.

But that was a minor matter. He*
had biological clocks in his body
which were more important. The
loudest-chiming one was in his
belly. He was sure that by now his
increasing weakness was due less
to lack of oxygen and his many

EASY WAY OUT

bruises than to simple hunger.
And, inescapably, thirst.

Accordingly he directed his first
efforts at digging toward where
he knew the ship's restaurant had
been located, on the side of the
hull opposite his surgery. But this
had been crushed far worse than
the other side. The sand was piled
high and spilled down to replace
whatever he scrabbled away. He
was on the brink of despair when
he recognized something shin-
ing in the beam of the torch.

Sand-scraped, the label told him
plainly: Whole Milk.

He seized the bulbous can and
raised it to his lips, ignoring the
sand that clogged the outlet. The
sand was presumably sterile. If it
was not he had already been ex-
posed over and over to whatever
minor life forms it bore. He gulped
down the milk in huge draughts,
thinking with a detached portion
of his mind that there was — or
should have been— something
symbolic in this action.

But this planet was not one he
could envisage substituting for
Mother Earth.

After that he found a whole
group of similar containers, ap-
parently the contents of a shelf
which had been in the compart-
ment adjacent to the restaurant
and which had been slammed
through a bulkhead in the crash.
Many of them were crushed and
had leaked their contents, but he

recovered more milk, various
types of consomme and broth and
five or six types of puree. Beyond,
there was a mess of fresh fruit, in-
cluding apples, papayas and a
mutated citrus he was fond of,
called yabanos, resembling a
lime bloated to the size of an
orange and with deep pink flesh.
He eagerly tore at its peel and had
already set a chunk of it to his lips
when he realized what his^sense of
touch had been trying to warn him
about: the crash had hurled this
fruit into something made of glass
and the glass had smashed. The
whole of it was permeated with
tiny sharp spikes.

He spat it out and threw it away
in fury.

This time he didn't shout it
aloud, but he said it inside his
head, very forcibly: / am not go -
ing to take the Easy Way Out ! /
am not! I am not . . .

And then that honesty he detest-
ed compelled him to add: At least
. . . / don't think I am.

He took one final look at An-
drew, who was still unconscious,
and gave him an injectorful of
glucose-and-vitamin booster. He
had found some high-protein con-
centrates and other life-supports,
but Andrew was carrying enough
fat on his belly to last him several
days, and he certainly wasn't go-
ing to become dehydrated over-
night— or whatever the equiva-
lent of “overnight" might be, mea-

sured in terms of how long it took
Pavel to wake up after he col-
lapsed on his pile of furs. His own
cabin, far astern in the crew’s
quarters, was unreachable, but a
dozen furs in the corridor afford-
ed a soft bed within earshot of
Andrew if he recovered con-
sciousness.

The rest . . .
could wait . . .
until later . . .

TURN IT on! Damn you—
damn you! Turn it onV ’

Pavel came awake in a second.
The cry, eerie in the echoing cor-
ridor, had seemed a continuation
of the dream he had been suffer-
ing, a vision of endless wander-
ing over a vast bare desert. He
forced himself to his feet, aware of
the nasty clinging of his clothes to
his body — normally he changed
twice a day and threw worn cloth-
ing into the recycler, but that was
smashed. During the night a
breeze must have blown away the
stench left by the fires inside the
ship; the air now, although still
very dry and oxygen-poor, smelled
of nothing at all.

When he had lain down to sleep
he had set the torch and a number
of flasks and medical phials near-
by. Now, though, he did not need
artificial light— the sun must be
well up in the sky and pouring in
through all the cracks in the
hull — and he was too dazed to

worry about the other things. He
stumbled into Andrew’s cabin,
rubbing his eyes.

Calm overtook him as he saw the
medical equipment he had rigged
yesterday. It was self-powered
against failure of the ship’s pow-
er; its state-of-operation lights
continued to gleam like little rep-
tile eyes. And indicated no
change worth noticing in An-
drew’s condition: metabolism
survival-prone, skeletal struc-
ture paralysis-prone, nervous sys-
tem pain-prone.

’That! That thing!”

Andrew shouted, as loudly as he
could, and raised his right arm to
point at the shelf where Pavel had
set the EWO.

’’Turn it on!”

Pavel drew a deep breath. His
head felt as though it had been
stuffed with sand from outside, his
mouth was as dry and harsh as
though the sand had been inserted
by that route and his stomach was
full of gas bloat. Also his ankle
seemed to have become worse dur-
ing his sleep, not better, and when
he rested his weight on it he
winced.

Reaching out, he took the EWO
off the shelf and wordlessly car-
ried it from the cabin. Behind him
Andrew screamed and howled.

It occurred to Pavel that he
should pitch the EWO out of the
ship altogether, into the sand,
where night- wind would cover it

EASY WAY OUT

and make it impossible to find
again. But even as he was tensing
his muscles to toss the thing away,
he relented. Rescue, after all,
might not come . . .

Of the many cupboards in his
surgery only one had not had its
doors tom off the hinges. He put
the EWO inside and slammed the
doors and twisted the lock shut,
thinking as he did so: Out of sight,
out of . . .

My mind?

But he didn’t want to think
about that.

When he returned to Andrew's
cabin he heard, from several
meters away, a helpless moaning
noise. He hurried his last few steps
and found Andrew with his hands
over his face, weeping.

'"Okay, okay," Pavel said, and
touched the younger man's arm
reassuringly. "I'm here and I
have my—"

"Turn it on," Andrew moaned,
his hands muffling the words.

"I've taken the EWO away,"
Pavel said. And waited.

"What?" The hands dropped
from Andrew's tear-wet face. "But
it's mine. If 1 tell you to turn it on
you've got to turn it on. 1 can't bear
to lie here and suffer this pain!"

"Would you rather throw away
the rest of your life," Pavel said af-
ter a moment to ponder his choice
of words, "than survive to enjoy
all these things you kept boasting
about on the trip— all the money,

100

luxury and power your family's
possessions will bring you?"

Andrew hesitated, letting his
arms fall to his sides. He looked
through fear-filled eyes at the med-
ical equipment enclosing his body
from the waist down.

Pavel went on waiting.

Abruptly — and unexpectedly -
Andrew said, "I guess if you don't
have too much anesthetic left you'd
better save it for when I start to
scream. But do you have a tran-
quilizing shot?"

A WAVE of relief swept over
Pavel. He had never heard An-
drew speak in such a reasonable
tone before. He said, "Sure. Not
much of that is left, either, though.
My whole stock of drugs was
thrown through the surgery bulk-
head along with me— and even if
some of them were saved from
breaking by landing in the furs
it'll take a while for me to dig them
out. Here's something to be going
on with, at least."

He selected the right injector
from the mixed batch he had
brought and applied it.

"Thank you," Andrew said, even
before it had taken effect. "I — I
guess I should apologize for shout-
ing at you."

Pavel shrugged.

"How are you?"

"Me?" Pavel's surprise showed
in his voice. "Oh — I'm not too
bad."

“I asked you a question. Don't I
deserve an answer?"

“Well— " Pavel licked his lips.
“My head aches like fury— but I
guess yours does too. It's the air.
My throat is sore, but that's the air
too — it's very dry. When the crash
came I acquired a gang of bruises
and a twisted ankle. Now you
know. And as a doctor I can
promise you I'm in far better
shape than you are."

“Obviously." A ghost of a smile
showed on Andrew's pale face.
“I'm in the kind of mess it would
take a major hospital to cope
with, aren't I ?"

Pavel nodded. There was no
point in trying to conceal the
truth.

“Then why the hell won't you
turn on the EWO?" Andrew blast-
ed.

Pavel froze. He said at last,
“You spoiled brat. Damn it, I
don't know a name to call you that
would say what I think."

“Now look here--" Andrew be-
gan, but Pavel plunged on.

“Before you try any more of
your tricks, get this into your solid
plasteel head, will you? I want to
stay alive, even if you don't.
You've been pampered all your
life, so even a hint of pain makes
you want to give up. But you can't
con me into doing what you want;
you can't threaten me into doing
what you want; you can't wheedle
me into doing what you want. For

once in your life you're simply go-
ing to have to do what someone
else wants. You're going to sur-
vive for as long as you can. That's
how most people live."

There was a dead silence. Since
Pavel had waked, the whole ship
had been silent, apart from the
soughing of a light wind across the
gaps in the hull. The trickling
noise he had heard yesterday in^
the surgery, the sifting noise of
sand filling a few remaining
spaces in the after part of the ship,
the creaking of the girders as they
cooled — all that had come to an
end. The only items in operation,
the medical equipment, were too
efficiently designed to make a
noise even after the punishment
they had taken.

Then the artificial calm of the
last shot he had been given oyer-
spread Andrew's face. He said,
“Well, if you're so determined to
keep me alive, you might as well
make me comfortable, too. I am
in pain, you know."

“All right," Pavel conceded.
“But I'll have to make it a short v
dose. I'll have to accustom you
gradually to supporting some of
your pain. I'm afraid. There's no
way of estimating how long it will
be before we're rescued." He pro-
duced and applied the correct in-
jector.

“And I'm afraid I can't be
absolutely certain how badly your
internal organs are affected," he

EASY WAY OUT

101

went on. “To be on the safe side,
I’ll have to keep you hydrated
with an intravenous transfusion
rather than letting you drink."

“But I'm very thirsty," Andrew
said in a dull tone.

“I imagine you must be. I have
some tablets you can suck to keep
your mouth and throat moist, but
they, too, will have to be rationed
out."

“Because we may be stuck here a
long time," Andrew murmured.
“What makes you so sure we are
going tb be rescued, hm?”

“Look, we’re in the same system
as Carteret," Pavel said. “We're
going to be reported overdue. If
a live detector happens to have
been anywhere in the vicinity, it
will have picked up our blip. It
might even have tracked us to im-
pact."

“Hell, if it tracked us to impact
no one will bother to come search-
ing," Andrew said. "Everyone
was killed but us, right? If they cal-
culate the speed we had when we
broached air -they’ll take it for
granted we just burned up."

Pavel put on his most reassur-
ing manner.

“Not if I can dig out something
to make a beacon with," he said.
“I'm not an engineer, but I hope
to find a solid-state transmitter
sooner or later— and a capacitor
or something to drive it with.
I’ll — uh — I'll leave you now and
get on with it."

102

“Thirsty!" Andrew said.

“Oh, of course. I’ll get you one
of those tablets to suck."

Behind the closed cupboard
doors the presence of the EWO
seemed to mock him when he en-
tered the surgery.

HAVING made a frugal break-
fast from half a can of fruit
puree, Pavel sat down to work out
a plan. In this sparse air he dared
not overexert himself. On the oth-
er hand, he must work quickly in
order to improve their chances of
survival, either to fix the beacon
he'd talked about or simply to lo-
cate more provisions.

In a while, despite his aching
head, he had worked out what
seemed to be a logical course of
action. He hunted around for
something he could adapt as a
shovel, found a plastic chair with
one metal leg still attached and, by
wedging the leg in a crack in the
wall and leaning on it with his full
weight, straightened it so that the
chair seat made a kind of flat scoop
and the leg a handle. Fine. Very
pleased with himself, he set about
digging where he had found the
bulbs of soup yesterday.

And almost at once discovered
a mangled corpse.

The thought crossed his mind
that if he absolutely had to, he
could reserve the canned supplies
until last— and eat meat. It should

remain good for a long time in this
dry air, away from Earth-type bac-
teria.

Revolting . . . better the EWO
than cannibalism . . .

Maybe.

He moved the body and with
much effort dragged it to a gash in
the hull and pushed it outside. He
scrambled after it and dragged it
out of sight down the dune and
flung a few shovelfuls of sand after
it. Then, aching in every limb, he
decided to walk around the ship
instead of going straight back in-
side.

The going was very difficult; the
dune was so dry, he sank over an-
kles at every step. But he managed
to carry out a complete inspec-
tion of the exposed part of the ship
and the more he saw, the mov6 he
marveled at his own escape. A
bare fifth of the vessel's length was
visible and as badly cracked as a
hard-boiled egg ready for shelling.
His heart sank. Was there any
hope at all of finding serviceable
equipment to rig his beacon?

There was only one way to find
out. He went back to his digging.

Time passed in a monotonous
slow blur. He fell immediately
into the routine which he was to
follow for the rest of their stay. He
dug for a while, making either the
discovery of a .corpse or the loca-
tion of a bit of intact equipment,
an excuse to break off, then went to
see Andrew and attend to his re-

E ASY WAY OUT

quests or inform him that they
could not be met.

THE first time he told Andrew
he would have to lie in pain a
bit longer before another shot,
Andrew curled back his lip and
said, "I've got you figured out.
You like this."

"What?"

"You like this. You like having
someone totally helpless — the
way 1 am. Gives you a sense of
power."

Sweat beaded his face, but evap-
orated almost at once into the dry
air.

"Nonsense," Pavel said rough-
ly, looking over the equipment at
the foot of the bunk. One of the
lights which had been green had
turned red. But there was no help
for that.

"1 know your type," Andrew
whined. "Nothing suits you bet-
ter than "

"Shut up," Pavel said. "I'm try-
ing to keep us both alive. And, if
possible, sane. Don't start on
crazy fantasies like that, or you'll
run the risk of making me angry.
I'm already living on my nerves."

"What does a doctor do when his
patient makes him angry? Turn
off the life-supports?"

"No." Pavel drew a deep but un-
satisfying breath. "Gets out of
earshot and stays there."

He marched out of the cabin and
slammed the door. In the corridor

103

he leaned for a while against the
wall, head on hands. But there was
work to do. He roused .himself and
returned to it. Not for the first
time, as he mustered all his en-
ergy and thrust the improvised
shovel into yet another heap of
sand, he wondered sickly why he
was wasting his time. He was now
well into the section where he
ought to have located usable elec-
tronic or subelectronic equip-
ment if any had survived — and all
he was finding was charred or
half-melted masses of metal and
plastic. There had been a fire here,
a hot one. Also, now and then, he
found items from spacemen's uni-
forms, such as buckles and rank
badges. And bones.

It took him almost three
days— daytimes, rather— to clear
the section of the ship of which he
had the highest hopes. The only
thing he found that was any use at
all was a solid-state emergency
lamp, its lumen-globe intact and
its powerpack barely below
maximum. Night was falling
when he came upon it. He switched
it on, thinking how wonderful it
was to have a proper light.

And then, with a pang of con-
science, how terrible it must be for
Andrew lying alone in the dark,
forced to wait hours between anes-
thetic shots. He picked up the lamp
and carried it to Andrew's cabin.

Andrew did not at first react to
the sound of the door sliding

back — it moved noisily now be-
cause the finest grains of sand sift-
ed everywhere when the wind rose
and the groove at the bottom was
covered with them. When he
opened his eyes, however, he did
not comment on the lamp.

He said, “Pavel, you — you look
terrible."

“What?" Pavel touched his face.
It had beard stubble on it, of
course, and no doubt dirt and sweat
had mingled to cover his skin with
a layer of grime. He hadn't given
thought to his appearance for a
long while.

“Could be," he said gruffly.
“But never mind. I found this
lamp. I thought it would be useful
for you. I could get you something
to pass the time now you have
light— maybe a book, if you like
reading. Or a game from the
recreation room. I dug into that
and found a few things."

Andrew seemed not to be listen-
ing. He said, “Why in the galaxy
are you driving yourself this way?
Did you find a way to send a signal
to a search-party?"

Pavel licked his lips; they tasted
of dust. “I found quite a lot of
stuff, but—"

“But it doesn't work?"

“No. I'm afraid it's all smashed
up."

“I thought it would be," An-
drew said. Now, by the bright clear
light, Pavel coujd see that his
cheeks had suddenly become

104

sunken. Another lamp shone red
on the medical gear enclosing his
legs. Yesterday it had been green.
Red for danger. “Pavel, you ought
at least to leave the EWO where I
can get at it. Suppose — well, sup-
pose you dig into somewhere and a
girder falls on you. Suppose
you’re hurt and can’t get back to
wherever you put the thing.’’

“I don’t want to use it,” Pavel
said obstinately.

“And you won’t keep me free of
pain all the time — ’’

“I can’t because — ”

“Oh, save it.’’ Andrew sighed
and rolled his head to the side op-
posite the lamp, shutting his eyes
again.

The ungrateful bastard , Pavel
thought and strode out.

THAT night he dropped off to
sleep the moment he lay on his
couch of furs in the passageway
outside Andrew’s door. He
dreamed of far-off worlds where he
had been happy and relaxed,
where he had basked in warm sun-
light and eaten luscious meals in
the company of pretty women—
the dreams shocked him awake.

Has A ndrew somehow got at the
EWO and turned it on?

That thought blasted through the
euphoria and brought him bolt up-
right with a jerk. Standing up and
waking were simultaneous. It

was dark; he had turned off the
lamp to conserve its powerpa<pk,
Andrew being asleep also. But he
had left it on a shelf just inside the
cabin door, and the door was ajar.
He located it by touch and
switched it on.

Andrew was lying, very pale and
sweating again, with his fists
clenched and his jaw set. Another
red light had appeared at the foot
of his bunk.

“Damn it, you’re in agony,’’
burst out of Pavel.

“I didn’t want — to — wake you.’’
Andrew forced the words past
tightly clamped teeth. “Thought
you — you deserved your rest.”
What in the galaxy was happen-
ing to this spoiled young man? But
Pavel wasted no time on wonder-
ing about it— he had, as usual,
placed a selection of phials and
other equipment by his. couch.
Seizing an injector, he gave An-
drew a full shot of pain-killer.

“Thanks,” the younger man
whispered and the drawn expres-
sion faded from his face. “Sorry I
disturbed you. I guess I cried out
without meaning to.”

“That’s okay,” Pavel said awk-
wardly. “Actually, you didn't.”
“You know something?” An-
drew stared at the ceiling. “I’ve
been thinking. I guess I never had
to think so long about the same
thing, over and over, in my life be-
fore. When the crash happened, I
was scared. I didn’t realize— I

EASY WAY OUT

105

kept telling myself it couldn't
possibly be happening to me — not
to Andrew Alighieri Solichuk-
Fehr. And — well, the way I see it
now, I went on trying to hide the
truth. Didn’t I? Don't bother to an-
swer. I know I'm right. And here
you've been working like a— like a
robot, while knowing what can be
done and what can't. Well, imag-
ine it had been the other way
around. Imagine that I’d been up
and walking about and you were
stuck in a bunk like me, busted all
to hell. I wouldn't know what to
do. I'd go crazy. I'd have just
turned the cap of the EWO and
given up."

Pavel listened, hardly believing
his ears.

“So I --well, Td just like to say
I'm obliged to you. I think it's the
most amazing luck that you were
the other person who survived.
It's finally dawned on me that
without you I'd be dead."

His fists clenched again, but not
this time from pain.

“And you're right. It's stupid to
die when you don't have to. It's
stupid to quit just because you
can't take a little pain, just be-
cause you're gambling on the
chance of being rescued and you
can't figure the odds. Hell, I've
gambled on a dozen planets for
things much less important than
life— for mere money. And I swear
1 wouldn't have bet on my chance
of still being alive after that crash."

“Nor would I," Pavel said in a
gravelly tone. From the corner of
his eye he noted that the last red
light had reverted to green, a sign
that it had been the pain that had
been putting the dangerous stress
on Andrew's metabolism. Dilem-
ma: whether to keep the pain
damped down in order to protect
his life-functions— or to husband
the supply of pain-killer and make
his life bearable, if not comfort-
able, for the greatest possible
length of time.

It was too much to think about
right now. Pavel's mind was still
fuzzy with sleep. Anyhow, An-
drew hadn't finished.

“You're sure we're on Quasi-
modo IV?"

Until this moment, Pavel hadn't
been certain that Andrew had
taken in the information he'd
been given about their situation.
"Yes. At least, as sure as I can be
without checking out some sort of
data on the system we were bound
for. I haven't dug into the library
section yet, but I think I'm com-
ing fairly close."

“Well, instead of wasting my
time on games and that sort of non-
sense, why don't you bring me what
you can salvage in the way of
books and reels? I guess if there's a
magnifying glass or microscope
to be had, I can make out a reel.
But without power there can't be
much hope of reading tapes, huh?"

"True enough. But— sure. I'll do

my best. Find some way of magni-
fying a reel so you can read it up
against that light/'

‘"Great," Andrew said. “Now
you go back to sleep or fix your
breakfast, or whatever you want.
I'll be okay until this shot wears
off. And for as long afterward as I
can honestly stand the pain."

TRAVEL kept thinking as he bur-
-I rowed deeper and deeper into
the accessible regions of the ship
that it helped enormously to know
that he had a companion in ad-
versity after all, someone he
could talk to, instead of a burden
on his time, a constant worry. He
did in fact locate a scratched and
broken piece of transpex with a
high magnifying factor, some
data reels and a few scorched
books whose pages had to be
turned very carefully in order to
prevent their crumbling, and An-
drew, propped up just a little on
his pillow, somehow contrived to
read a few of them by the portable
lamp. There were only passing
references to Quasimodo IV- it
never having been a planet of
much interest to spacemen— but
what little he gleaned confirmed
that that was where they were, and
moreover that they were current-
ly on the same side of the local sun
as Carteret.

But in that case . . .

Why haven t we been rescued al-
ready?

EASY WAY OUT

The fourth, fifth, eighth days
melted into the past almost fea-
turelessly. The strain of working
in low oxygen was weakening
Pavel; he hated waking up and of-
ten his digging was reduced to the
mindless act of a machine, so that
he had already shoveled aside a
piece of potentially useful equip-
ment before his sluggish brain
recognized it. Then he had to go
scrabble for it with bare hands in
the pile of sand behind him. And,
of course, all the time he kept find-
ing dead bodies.

For a brief while, following An-
drew’s remarkable discovery of
courage, the cupboard where he
had stored the EWO held no threat
to Pavel. A day— two days— later,
and the blisters on his hands and
the grit in his mouth and the red-
ness of his eyes and the endless, in-
curable thirst he suffered from
conspired to reawaken its specter
in his memory. Instead of being
here, victim of harsh reality, he
could be in a lovely, imaginary
world, enjoying himself in any
way he chose, picturing the most
beautiful girls, the smoothest
lawns, the finest beaches.

He drove the ghost away.

The supply of drugs dwindled,
though he hoarded them careful-
ly. So did the protein concen-
trates and glucose-and-vitamin
solutions which were all the food
he could offer Andrew. Luckily
he had had just enough of a sub-

107

stance which triggered the body’s
use of stored fat — a short-cut for
overindulgent passengers, basi-
cally, who now and then realized
at the end of a long spaceflight
that they had put on two kilos
while they were shut up in the metal
shell of the ship and wanted to re-
vert to normal weight before land-
ing. He had never expected to
make practical use of what he or-
dinarily regarded a^ a cosmetic
drug. The two injections of it
which he had given to Andrew,
however, had worked well, and
though his skin was now deflated
over his premature paunch— like a
collapsed balloon — he was able to
utilize what long overindulgence
had stored between his muscles
and his skin.

Pavel took more and more fre-
quently to going outside and star-
ing up at the sky, knowing it was
ridiculous to do so. One couldn't
see an orbiting rescue ship by
day —and if it arrived during the
night it would no doubt fire signal
flares and perhaps sonic missiles
.to wake survivors up and pro-
voke them into lighting fires or
somehow revealing their presence.

Fires?

THE idea should have come to
him much earlier; in fact, it
didn’t strike him until he finally
had to concede that further dig-
ging was useless. The part of the
ship he hadn't yet cleared of sand

108

had collapsed and he lacked the
strength and the tools to force aside
the strong metal girders now
blocking his progress.

He had been aimlessly post-
poning the admission that noth-
ing else constructive was left for
him to do when the notion of mak-
ing a fire occurred to him. At
night a fire could be spotted a long
way off under this clear sky. He
had seen clouds only once since the
crash and those only on the hor-
izon around the setting sun. Pre-
sumably an ocean lay in that di-
rection, but a rise in the
ground— a range of hills or moun-
tains— filtered all the moisture
from the wind before it blew this
far inland.

Andrew had found scant refer-
ence to the meteorological pat-
tern of Quasimodo IV in the
charred books Pavel brought him.

Was anything left in the wreck
that would flame brightly in this
thin air? Pavel made tests,
cautiously, with flammable liq-
uids from his surgery: alcohol,
ether, some otherwise useless
tinctures and suspensions which
bore fire warnings on their labels.
Satisfied that it might indeed be
possible to light a fire, he set about
resifting the great mounds of rub-
bish he had thrown aside, dividing
them into two new categories:
things that would catch light and
things that wouldn’t. That occupied
a day or two more.

Little by little, however, he be-
gan to find himself obsessed with
the passage of time.

If we can last four more
days — three more days, two . . .

He caught himself up with a
shock. There still was no promise
of rescue. In his mind the fifteen-
day period he had estimated as
the limit of the time he could keep
Andrew alive had evolved into an
article of faith: If we last out fif-
teen days well be okay . . .

What grounds did he have for
believing that? On the contrary,
he realized, now that eleven,
twelve, thirteen days had leaked
away, their chances of being saved
were less, not more. Even if Mag-
nusson had been notoriously
sloppy about routine matters,
such as signaling to the port he
was bound for when his ship
broached normal from subspace,
they should have started search-
ing long ago.

The vision of the EWO shut in
the cupboard rose before him and
sang an inaudible song of mock-
ery.

WEAKENED by his efforts,
short oxygen and with barely
sufficient food, he had taken to
spending an hour or two each day
between exhaustion and slumb-
er in conversation with Andrew.
The first few times had been a sort
of stimulant for him; he had never
had any clear concept of what life

EASY WAY OUT

was like for someone who was due
to inherit one of the great for-
tunes of the galaxy, coming as he
did from average, ordinary stock
on both sides of his own family:
pioneers five generations back,
who seemed to have used up their
ambition and initiative in the
singlp crucial act of leaving Earth.

He himself, by deciding to sign
as a space medical officer before
settling to a regular career, and
moreover saying that it might not
be on his home world of Caliban
that he chose to practice, had
shocked all his relatives. They
were no longer geared to star
travel. By contrast, Andrew's
background since he was born had
included the concept of galaxy-
roaming: Uncle Herbert is on
Halys and sends his love , or may-
be, / think well take the kids to
Peristar this year . . .

Not that Andrew himself had
appreciated his good fortune un-
til now. He had looked on it more
as a distasteful duty than a rea-
son for excitement and enjoy-
ment when he had been instructed
to tour the family holdings.

Now, listening to Pavel explain-
ing his attitude, he seemed to
have come around to the view that
he had been stupid, wasting an op-
portunity thousands, millions of
young men would have sold their
right arms for. Head constantly
aching, unceasingly shaky on his
feet and having to concentrate

109

with all his force like a man strug-
gling to pretend he isn’t drunk,
Pavel had done his best to en-
courage Andrew — until the eve-
ning of the day when he admitted
to himself that even if they did last
out for the two weeks he had in-
vented as a deadline they were
probably doomed anyhow.

Then he was snappish and ill-
tempered, heard his own voice re-
viving accusations from the
Pennyroyal s last voyage— refer-
ences to Hans, references to drunk-
enness, references to laziness and
greed and lack of consideration for
other passengers. Hurt, at first sur-
prised, later angry, Andrew retort-
ed in kind, and the should-have-
been friendly chat wound up with
a grinding slam of the cabin door.

But the last thing Pavel had
glimpsed was not just one more red
light — he*d grown accustomed to
one a day, on average, added to
the original total— but a whole
new cluster of them, which yester-
day had been green.

Shaking from head to foot, he
waited in the corridor for as long
as it took to calm himself. Then he
reopened the door.

“I’m sorry,’’1* he said. “I’m
ashamed of myself. You’re in ter-
rible pain. The lights — ’’ He ges-
tured at them. They were natur-
ally turned away from the patient.

“I know," Andrew muttered.

“What?”

“Of course I know.” With re-

newed anger. “That machine of
yours wasn’t designed to be used
in a completely dark room, but a
hospital ward with twilight ooz-
ing out of the walls — right? Every
night when you switch off the lamp
for me to go to sleep, I can see the
light reflected over there—” ges-
turing— “and I can tell that it’s
more red than it was before. I
know I’m in a bad way, for heav-
en’s sake! I know!”

The last word peaked into a cry.
Pavel bit his lip. He said, “I
guess I haven’t been completely
honest with you. I— rwell, I no
longer believe in being rescued.
If we were going to be rescued it
ought to have happened by now.
Do you want me to — ”

“Switch on the EWO?” Andrew
broke in. “No — No! And no again!
You were right to take it away
from me. Lying here, pain or no
pain. I've come to realize how
precious life can be. No, 1 don’t
want you to use it. Take it out and
bury it— smash it with a ham-
mer— anything.”

His voice cracked with pain.
Sweat glistened on his skin.

“Well — uh — all right then,’’
Pavel said. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Pavel dreamed about the EWO
again.

THE nightmares didn’t stop in
the morning.

When he opened the cabin door,

having slept badly, he found An-
drew not just asleep but uncon-
scious. All but four of the lights on
the medical equipment had gone
to red. A glance at their pattern
confirmed that it was the struggle
to resist pain that had worn him
out — that, and the exhaustion of
the last phial of nutrient solution
in Pavel's limited stock. There
was enough water left to keep him
hydrated and enough tissue in his
muscles for the “second-wind"
process to keep his basal metabo-
lism turning over for a few more
hours— perhaps a couple of days,
if he remained inert.

Beyond that point?

Certain death.

Pavel stared in giddy disbelief.
He tried to tell himself that it was
an achievement to have kept An-
drew alive and conscious, in his
condition, for such a long
time— not fifteen ordinary days,
as he had somehow been fool
enough to' imagine, but fifteen of
these extra-long local days. It was
a medical miracle in its small
way. Hardly any modern doctor
could have managed it without
the aid of a full range of diagnostic
and supportive equipment.

But what was the use of having
done it when nobody else would
ever find out?

All hope seeped out of his mind.
His overstrained will to survive
collapsed like a bridge required to
carry too great a load, folding al-

EASY WAY OUT

most gracefully into an un-
recognizable tangle of struts and
pillars. He was barely Pavel
Williamson any longer as he
turned with machine-precise
movements and headed for his
surgery.

In that cupboard he had passed
so many times waited the Easy
Way Out.

He took it, sleek and chill, from
its case and turned it over and over.
It was well past dawn and there
was plenty of light to see by.

/ denied him this , Pavel thought.
I could have ended his life in ecs-
tasy instead of a vain , stupid ,
pointless struggle against pain .
Now he will die , unconscious ,
and — and he turned out to be a nice
guy in his way. / feel almost fond
of him — and horribly ashamed of
myself

Because Vm going to use what /
forbade him . . .

Convulsively he twisted the
white cap of the EWO and pressed
it down. It sank visibly along the
main shaft and a humming rose.
Pavel closed his eyes.

Disbelievingly he opened them
again. All was exactly as it had
been. Except the EWO. Heavy in
his hands, it was now also growing
hot.

He let it fall with an oath. A hiss-
ing noise followed, and a puff of
smoke spurted from the capped
end. The cap — some kind of plas-
tic, he guessed — became de-

111

formed and darkened.

After that it simply lay there.

He stared at it incredulously for
a long while: how long, he could
not tell. He felt like a suicide who
took much trouble over choosing
and knotting a rope only to have it
break under his weight.

’Til be damned,” he said
furiously at last. “For all that
pretty case with the combination
lock — for all the padding it was
nested in — it broke when we
crashed. It doesn’t work!”

The thing was no longer smok-
ing. He touched it and found it
merely warm. Snatching it up, he
swung around to leave the surgery,
blind with rage.

‘Til pay him back ~for leading
me on this way,” he heard himself
muttering, Til get even. I’ll—”

What is that?

From somewhere outside came a
roaring sound. The crumpled steel
of the corridor vibrated. Pavel
stood still, one hand already out-
stretched to slide back the door of
Andrew’s cabin.

The roar faded, then grew loud-
er again. He stared in horror at the
EWO in his hand, thinking: Did it
work after all? Is this an induced
illusion , the fantasy of rescue?

But, surely, knowing how
ashamed he had been when he was
finally driven to try and use the
gadget, he could rule that out. Any
illusion he was capable of enjoy-
ing would exclude all memory of

112

the EWO, because even to recall
its existence would remind him he
was condemned to death.

Uncertain, he turned around —
and was suddenly pelting at full,
lung-tearing speed toward the
nearest opening in the hull to light
his beacon with trembling fingers
and keel over beside it for the res-
cue party to locate.

<<¥ GUESS someone should

A apologize for our not coming
to find you sooner,” said the doc-
tor at the central hospital on
Carteret. “But it was logical
enough to abandon all hope the
moment the Pennyroyals course
had been computed. I mean, you
wouldn’t expect anyone to live
through a crash like that, would
you?”

“I guess not,” Pavel said. He felt
very much better, although this
oxygen-rich air was still making
him a trifle giddy. “And when the
people did turn up they came only
for salvage, right? Not for
rescue?”

“I’m afraid so,” the doctor ad-
mitted. “It was the insurance
company covering that consign-
ment of furs that chartered the
ship that picked you up.” He hesi-
tated. “By the way, I’d like to
compliment you on the marvel-
ous job you did on Andrew Soli-
chuk. You know, his family is very
big here on Carteret and if he'd

been found dead — ” He ended the
sentence with a gesture.

“Yes,” Pavel said. “Yes, it was a
pretty good job, though I say so
myself.”

He looked absently out of the
window. This was a splendid mod-
em building, very expensive, sur-
rounded by magnificent lawns
and flowerbeds. He could see a
swimming pool and a sun terrace
where patients were soaking up
the sunlight. Absently he ca-
ressed something smooth and
heavy on his lap.

The EWO that hadn’t worked.

He said suddenly, “How is An-
drew now? I’d like to see him if 1
can.”

“I imagine that can be ar-
ranged,” the doctor said heartily.
“Of course, he was in very bad
shape when he was brought here,
but when they heard the news his
family back on Earth signaled
that we should spare no expense.
He’s had the finest surgery avail-
able on this planet. He's up and
about already — and as a matter
of fact, 1 believe he asked to see
you. Come with me.” Rising, he
added with a chuckle: “Aren’t you
glad that thing of yours was broken
after all?”

“What?” Pavel gave him a con-
fused stare. “Oh, this?” He hefted
the EWO. “It’s not mine.”

“We assumed it was,” the doc-
tor said. “You were clinging to it
for dear life. When you were un-

EASY WAY OUT

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else would we have gotten the galleys
of DRAGONQUEST read in time?)
and for others to visit us from vari-
ous points of our small globe. In this
way we hope to evade yet another
problem of bigness— lack of commun-
ication.

•

AS TO what happens within our of-
fices of (now) 2 % floors, it's a bloody
mad house. We conducted a small
poll recently and found that not one
of the 90-odd bodies now located here
would want it any other way. Work-
ing in this firm does something to peo-
ple. As an example of our esprit-de-
corps (if that is, indeed, what it can
be called) the entire Accounting De-

113

partment is flowering forth in beards.
Formidable. A lot of us even read our
own books— outside of the editors,
that is. (This is a rare thing in a pub-
lishing house.) This department must
sadly admit to not being able to keep
up with the whole list any more. Just
the Adult Fantasy, Science Fiction,
Mysteries, Westerns, Ecology, En-
vironment, Comstock and sex books.
Enough.

•

HAVING thus brought you adroitly
to the discussion of books, what have
we got for this month— a whole fleet
of books from Fred Pphl and Jack
Williamson, namely: UNDERSEA
QUEST, UNDERSEA FLEET, and
UNDERSEA CITY-three to do with
subsea academy types (did you see
that crazy Cousteau film on the sea-
dragons of Galapagos?) involved in
various adventures, plus another
group of Clark Ashton Smith stories
-HYPERBOREA-our Adult Fan-
tasy. Meanwhile all the H.P. Love-
craft titles in Ballantine and Beagle
go bouncing from glory to glory.
Great stuff.

MORE about dragons next month,
and meantime, GET OFF THE TOP
OF THE FOOD CHAIN!

Sincerely . . . BB

dergoing your psychiatric re-
orientation they wanted to take
it away, but when I saw how
violently you reacted to losing it
I told them they ought to let you
hang on to it. A sort of mental
sheet-anchor. You say it isn't
yours?"

"No, it belonged to Andrew."
Pavel stared wonderingly down at
the thing. "It must have sunk all
sorts of barbs in my subconscious
if I clung to it as you say I did. I
guess it's time I got rid of it. I'll
give it back to Andrew, let him
know it wouldn't have helped any-
way. He was at me to use it, you
know, for days and days after we
landed. I mean crashed."

"I'm not surprised." The doctor
nodded. "Suffering the way he
was — Still, according to what
he's been saying, you infected
him — so to speak — with the will to
live. He's very anxious to see you
again, you know."

He courteously indicated that
Pavel should precede Him through
the door.

AND there he was: almost un-
recognizably lean, nearly
naked in the bright warm sunlight,
with a few traces of scarring
around his waist and lower back
but grinning from ear to ear. He
had been in the pool and drops of
water were still running down his
body, but he hurled aside the towel

114

he had been about to use and ad-
vanced on Pavel with a shout of
joy.

“Pavel! How can I ever thank
you for saving my life? You were
right, right all along — if it hadn’t
been for you, I wouldn’t be here
now, back in one piece, able to en-
joy life again! Here, let me shake
your hand.”

His voice changed even as he put
out his hand.

“What’s that?” he said faintly
and all the color faded from his
cheeks. “It’s — You bastard!”

“What?” Standing uncertainly
before him, Pavel held up the
EWO. “You mean this? Why, I
was just about to tell you. If
you’d — ”

“You devil!” Andrew snatched it
from him and stared at the capped
end. It was obvious that it had
been pushed home. “You activa-
ted it. After all your pious preach-

ing you activated it. And — and — ”

He looked about to be physical-
ly sick.

“And all this must be illusion
after all! Which means I’m going
to die— just as I’d finally found
out how to enjoy being alive! You
bastard, you devil V9 His face
contorted into a mask of fury.

“Now just a moment,” said the
doctor at Pavel’s side, stepping
forward. Pavel himself was
frozen with pure amazement, in-
capable of speaking, barely able,
to think.

But the doctor was too late.

Raising the heavy plasteel
cylinder of the EWO above his
head with all the force his newly
discovered health and vigor afford-
ed, Andrew brought it slamming
down and smashed open Pavel’s
skull as completely and as fatally
as the hull of the wrecked Penny-
royal. ★

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THEY were waiting for Andy
Galt as he left the Weather
Control Complex at the end of the
Dawn Shift: Pinchot, sleek and
dandified even in a Survey cover-
all, Williver, big and soft, with a
worried look on his too-small face,
Gray, lean as a ferret, bright-eyed,
nervous, and Timmins, silent as
usual.

“You’ve heard?” Pinchot said.
“They did it.”

Galt nodded.

“Some politico who's never been
within five lights of Colmar de-
cides we need to open another
hundred miles of desert,” Gray
said. “So five hundred* of us are
going to be drafted and shipped
out to the plateau to play the
hardy pioneer.”

“We knew they were going
ahead,” Walt said, “Why act sur-
prised?”

“There was always a chance
they’d. take our warning and back
down,” Gray said. He had a thin,
high voice, a mouth that seemed al-
ways to be grinning a secret grin.

“It couldn’t have been more bla-
tant if they were trying to goad us
beyond endurance,” Pinchot
said. “It's as if they were thumb-
ing their noses and daring us to do
something.”

“We told them,” Williver said,
( Please turn to page 118)

THE

RIGHT

REVOLT

First, can you keep From losing?

KEITH

116

. then, can you keep from winning?

LAUMER

THE craslf of breaking glass
was like an explosion in the
darkness. Planetary Adminis-
trator Andrew Galt came awake,
rolled off the side of the bed and
hugged the floor. In the silence a
final glass fragment fell from the
window frame to the rug. Galt got
to his feet, saw the paper-wrapped
bolt lying by the dresser.

END TYRANNY ON COL-
MAR was lettered neatly in red on
the back of a recently published
ration application form. Galt
grunted and tossed the paper away.
It was nearly dawn, he saw. He
dressed and went down to the
kitchen. Freddy, his butler-valet-
driver-bodyguard-secretary was
there, brewing coffee.

“You're up early, Mr. Adminis-
trator," he said formally.

“No protocol this early in the
( Please turn to page 131 )

117

THE RIGHT TO REVOLT

( Continued from page 116)

sounding frightened. He swal-
lowed. “We held off until now to
give them a chance to see reason.
They didn’t. Opening a new sec-
tor now is a smack in the teeth to
every man in the colony."

“It's not just a little kick in the
mouth," Gray said. “It's slavery
for all of us who are tagged to go
out on the advance team. And for
what? To give the Colonial Bu-
reau a nice growth rate to brag
about."

“To fill politicians' pockets back
on Terra," Pinchot corrected.
“We're supposed to give up our
homes, families, friends, move out
into the desert, live in lash-up hut-
ments, eat issue rations, work like
horses fourteen hours a day — ”

“I'm not afraid of work," Galt
said. “If it were on a voluntary
basis I might even sign on."

“But it's not voluntary, Galt. It's
compulsory. They decide who
goes and for how long."

uEven here in town it's serf-
dom," Gray said. "Look at
you— with an advanced degree in
administration — putting in your
two years on a board at Weather
like any clod. And Pinch, here,
with a Master's in personel dy-
namics "

“What about the petition, Pin-
chot?" Galt cut off the complaint
impatiently. “Didn't you get an
answer?"

PINCHOT took a paper from
an inside pocket, handed it
over. It was a letter on the sta-
tionery of the Colonial Admini-
strator, formally — and patron-
izingly, Galt thought— thanking
the addressee for his interest in
administration policy.

"It was addressed to me by
name," Pinchot said, “not to the
Committee. Don't ask me how
they knew. But it doesn't matter
now." He tore the letter in two
and tossed it aside. “So much for
appeals to established authori-
ty. We tried the peaceful way.
Now we're taking matters into
our own hands. So -are you with
us. Gait- or against us?"

“He doesn't have to be either,"
Timmins spoke up. “He's got a
right to be neutral."

Pinchot shook his head. “Not
any more," he said. “The time's
come to take sides."

“The Committee of Fifty," Galt
said, "consisting of forty-one
members by actual count, out of
over twenty-five thousand colo-
nists— "

“What percentage of French
peasants staged the French Revo-
lution?" Gray demanded. “How
many Americans actually fired
on the Redcoats? How many Bol-
sheviks tossed out the Czar?"

“WV/^i do it," Pinchot said, his
eyes na^. and intent. “We move

118

in fast, take the Port and the
Comm Center, the generator
and pumping stations, the depot
and warehouses, grab Admin
House — and we're in charge."

"What about the Security
Force?"

"We'll bottle them up in their
barracks."

"Spacearm could blow us off the
planet."

“But they won't. BuCol wants
profits, that means operating
mines and plants. We'll cooper-
ate with them; they won't get
rough. They'U#accept the fait ac-
compli."

All heads turned as the soft
whirr of a turbodyne sounded. A
police cart came into view ; the men
stood silent as it coasted to a stop
beside them. A tall, loose-jointed
man in Security uniform swung
down, sauntered over. He was a
stranger, too tall, too pale, out
from Terra, not a colonial.

"Let's see your IDs. fellows," he
said in a nasal Terran accent.
His partner sat stolidly on the
cart, watching. The four colon-
ists handed over their tags, which
were scrutinized cursorily and
handed back.

"What are you doing here?" the
Security man asked in a laz\ tone,
as if he didn't much care but was
asking anyway. Gall felt his face
tighten. He shook off Willis* re-
straining hand.

"Minding our own business." he

said harshly. "Why?"

The Security man looked him
over casually.

"Come over to the flat," he said
easily.

"What for?" Galt said.

"Move," the cop snapped and
flipped a small rod from his belt.

Galt walked over to the cart.

"Turn around, get your hands up
behind your head."

Galt followed orders. Careless
hands slapped down his sides, deft-
ly turned his pockets inside out.
The Security man grunted.

"That's all. Break it up now. I
don't want to see you hanging
around in the streets after five
bells."

The cart rolled away. Pinchot
came over, picked up the items the
Security man had dropped on the
pavement, handed them to Galt.

"They're nice fellows." he said
softly, "just doing their job.*

"When?" Galt asked tightly.

"Tonight. Be at the Watergate at
midnight, read} for action." Pin-
chot said.

"I ll be there.** Gall said.

WALKING through the dark
street, Galt thought about it.
He remembered stirring stories
he‘d read in grade school of hardy
pioneers of half a century earli-
er his grandfather among
them - who had come out from
Terra during the Population
Riots to cast their lot for them-

THE RIGHT TO REVOLT 119

selves and their families on the vir-
gin world called Colmar.

It had been a terrifying cross-
ing: five thousand men and wom-
en in the hold of a marginally
spaceworthy freighter, packed like
sardines with barely space to
move, fed on minimal rations,
three bodies alot^ed to each bunk,
sharing community toilets, with
no amusements, no privacy, no
relief for the long months of the
voyage.

And arriving at the end of
it not on the soft, green world of
open spaces and fresh air they’d
been led to expect — but on the
harsh bare rock of Colmar.
There’d been riots then and some
killing. But in the end the survi-
vors had voted to stay, to take
their chances on the new world, to
conquer or die.

Very melodramatic , Galt

thought to himself. But what’s it
got to do with today? They worked
out their lives to give us — their de-
scendants— something better.

But do we have it? We’ve seeded
the oceans , made soil , planted
crops. Today we can talk in the
open air without respirators , eat
our home-grown vegetables; we
have a town with an auditorium ,
a sports arena and a public li-
brary . . .

“But we're still slaves," he said
aloud. “We've been used; we dance
to Terra's tune. The best of our
products go off-planet in return

120

for a bare subsistence level of
imports. And the time has come
for a change."

THEY were a vague crowd in
the darkness. Galt pushed his
way through, turning his face
away from a beam of light from a
pocket flash. Pinchot appeared,
a white sweatband around his
forehead. His face was taut; his
tongue flicked restlessly at his
lower lip. He handed Galt a small
plastic-boxed talker.

“You're on Team One, hitting
Admin House. You worked a
summer there as a messenger,
you know the layout. You lie low
until it's secured. If Gray — I
mean, when Gray and his team se-
cure the port they'll call in. Same
with Tomkin, Pyle, Bergson — all
the teams will report to you when
they've pinned down their objec-
tives. I’ll liaise with you — ’’

“Where am I supposed to hide
while the rest of you are winning
the war?"

“You take cover in the park
while the rest of the team goes in.
When you see their signal— we're
using survey flares— move in and
take over the switchboard."
Pinchot beckoned to a tall, lean
man. “Fry's your Team Leader.
You stick close to him until they
move in. Okay, get going.’’

Galt followed Fry and the other
members of his team — two men
and a girl named Teresa — as they

threaded their way through the
now-dispersing throng, turned
east along the Outer Drive, head-
ing for the park. The talker box
muttered and crackled, monitor-
ing terse conversations.

As they turned into Park Way,
Galt caught Fry’s arm. “That’s a
copflat parked up there.” He
pointed to a police cart under a
pole light a hundred yards dis-
tant.

“There's nobody near it,” Fry
said and shook off his hand.
“Come on. We’ve got three min-
utes to get in position.”

The party went on, entered the
park via a service gate, crossed to-
ward the line of trees behind which
the lights of Admin House glowed
peacefully. They halted beside a
fountain which tossed sprays up
into colored light.

“There’s a gap in the hedge.”
Fry pointed. “As soon as you see
my flares, come in on the run.”

Galt nodded and took up his post
behind a screen of shrubbery as
the others slipped silently away.
They reached the street, started
across. A fine mist of spray from
the fountain dampened Galt's
face. An imported insect alighted
on his neck. He brushed it away.

The spotlights lanced out simul-
taneously from two points; one was
aimed downward from the roof of
Admin House, raking across the
lawn, pinpointing the gate
through which Fry and Teresa

THE RIGHT TO REVOLT

were just passing; the other, from
the parked copflat, struck the
group horizontally, threw stark
shadows against the hedges. The
two conspirators caught outside
the gate froze for a moment, then
turned and ran, their feet noisy in
the silent street. An amplified
voice boomed out.

“Stop where you are! Davies,
Henddrson! We know you, you
can’t get away — ” The voice broke
off as light winked and a shot
crashed from the gate. Fry was ly-
ing flat in the shadow of the orna-
mental gatepost. Galt saw anoth-
er flash, but the second shot was
drowned by the short savage roar
of a police bullet-pump. Fry’s
body was flung a foot into the air
and hurled ten feet back like a bun-
dle of rags. The two runners
skidded to a halt and threw them-
selves face down in the street. Galt
saw Teresa reach the front en-
trance of the government build-
ing; as she ran up the steps, the
door burst open and two uni-
formed security men gathered
her in.

Men in battle armor, hand guns
ready, were swarming into the
street, clustering at the gate and
around the captives. Heavy foot-
steps sounded behind Galt. He
hugged the ground, ducked as
lights glared, playing across the
shrubbery around him. A man
went past less than six feet away.

At that moment, the talker box

121

uttered a burst of static and a
small clear voice said, “Power sta-
tion secured. One man hurt and a
couple of windows broken — oth-
erwise no damage."

The Security man who had just
passed halted; gravel crunched as
he swiveled, playing his light
about. Galt eased back. The light
flicked closer. He reached a large
tree, got to his feet. A twig crack-
led.

“Stop there," the Security man
barked. Galt ran. A shot sang
through foliage. He heard sounds
ahead, veered right, crashed
through a head-high hedge onto a
bricked path. Two uniformed men
standing fifty feet away turned to-
ward him; he plunged around a
bench, dived into massed foliage.
It yielded and he was in the clear.

A tremendous blow on the calf
of his right leg sent him tumbling.
He rolled, tried to jump up, fell on
his face. His leg was hot, numb, a
dead weight. Scrabbling fran-
tically with his hands, he dragged
himself under a spread of juni-
per, felt the ground crumble be-
neath him. He rolled, fetched up
with a thump in drifted leaves at
the bottom of a drainage ditch.

The voices and footsteps came
closer, but they seemed remote
and unimportant now. Galt's
thoughts had leaped ahead, quite
calmly, to the trial, the convic-
tion, the prison sentence, the loss
of his citizenship . . .

122

THE DARK was quiet now. Lis-
tening closely, Galt could hear
distant voices over the rustle of fo-
liage in the light breeze; but noth-
ing stirred nearby. He moved his
injured leg tentatively, discov-
ered to his surprise that it re-
sponded, though painfully. He sat
up, explored the wound. There
was a neat hole in the mass of mus-
cle below and behind the knee, a
less neat hole to the left of the shin.
A small calibre solid shot had
gone through without hitting the
bone. He rose to his feet. He could
walk. He brushed leaves away,
climbed out of the ditch and was
confronting the hedge that bor-
dered Government Street.
Through a gap he could see the
lighted front of Admin House.
Uniformed men were on the ter-
race, on the lawn. The front doors
stood open, brilliantly lit. Floods
illuminated the lawns. A dozen
copflats were in sight parked
along the street.

At first Galt didn't see it; then he
did: Two-thirds of the Security
Force was here, posted two deep
around the front of the house; and
he could see that the rear service
entrance was equally guarded.
But the small and inconspicuous
entry at the side was shrouded in
shadow. Insofar as Galt could
see no Security men were near it.

The talker crackled and spoke:
The Power Complex was in rebel
hands. Pyle, at the port, called in:

all secure. Bergson, sounding
elated, reported the virtually un-
opposed seizure of the pumping
station. The uprising had gone
well — all but the most vital part.
Administrator Blum and Major
Jensen had concentrated all their
forces here. They hadn’t been
fooled for a moment. They knew
all about the Committee’s plans
and had been ready.

But there was that side door.
Galt’s mouth was dry; his heart
pounded painfully. It could be a
trap. There might be half a dozen
Sec men lying in wait for the
mouse to take the cheese. But on
the other hand, the door was little
used; it was just possible that Jen-
sen had overlooked it.

Galt could slip away now, re-
turn home, and be as surprised as
everybody else when the news
came out. Or he could put his neck
solidly in the noose.

With a cuTse that was half pray-
er, he left his vantage point and,
limping, slipped away along the
hedge line.

FROM a clump of shadow be-
tween the library and the Agri-
cultural Experimental Building
Galt studied the scene.* He had a
better view of the side door from
here. Nothing stirred there. To
anyone not intimately familiar
with the building, there appeared
to be an unbroken mass of shrub-
bery along the east wall. Galt took

THE RIGHT TO REVOLT

a deep breath* and stepped out,
crossed the street openly, two hun-
dred yards from the lighted gate of
Admin House. He went back past
the west wing of the elementary
school, crossed the playground,
came up along a path to a point fif-
ty feet from the rear corner of Ad-
min House, paused for a moment,
then ran across a strip of open
ground to the door. There was no
alarm. He tried the latch, then
pushed with his shoulder. The pan-
el yielded slightly. He stepped
back, kicked straight out at the
lock. Plastic and metal shat-
tered, the door bounced in. Galt
slid inside, shut the door and stood
in darkness, listening.

Voices sounded from the front of
the house; somewhere a radio
crackled and a toneless voice
droned, too faint to make out the
words. Feet clumped to and fro.
There was a stair a few feet ahead.
Galt felt his way in darkness,
found the newel post, started up.
He saw dim light above. On the
second floor he looked along a
carpeted hall. At the far end, a
man in mufti with a paper in his
hand emerged from a room, hur-
ried away. Galt went on up.

The third floor corridor was il-
luminated. A uniformed Security
man stood twenty feet away, fid-
dling with the mechanism of his
blastgun. The man holstered the
weapon, walked to the far end pf
the hall, lifted a house phone from

123

its hook, began an inaudible con-
versation. He turned his back to
Galt's position, still talking. Galt
slid out, eased silently along the
passage to the intersection with
the wide corridor off which' the ad-
ministrative suite opened.

Four Security men were in sight
— two posted beside the ivory-
enameled double doors, the other
two at the main staircase. One of
the men guarding the stairs de-
scended a few steps to carry on a
conversation regarding the
wherabouts of someone named
Katz. His partner leaned over the
rail, his back to Galt. The two men
on the door had their heads turned,
following the exchange. Galt
stepped out and walked silently
and swiftly toward the door ad-
jacent to the guarded portal. He
was six feet from it when one of the
men glanced his way, gave a start-
led grunt and grabbed for his slung
blastgun, fumbled it.

“Here, you, where you think
you’re going?" he blurted.

“Special messenger," Galt said
crisply.

He reached the door for which
he had been headed as the second
guard swung his gun around; Galt
tried the knob; it turned; he
plunged through as two shots rack-
eted in the hall, gouging molten
plastic from the doorframe. He
spun, slammed the door, tripped
the security lock system, heard
armor sliding into place as a heavy

124

body struck the panel from out-
side. Men hammered and shouted
as Galt ran across the room,
paused for an instant at the con-
necting door, picturing the slugs
that would rip into his body if the
administrator had posted guards
inside his office as well as in the
hall. Then he opened it and stepped
through.

Administrator Blum was a
plumpish man with graying hair;
he sat behind his desk, his eyes on
the hall door, an expression of
surprise on his face. As Galt ap-
peared he whirled, reached for a
desk drawer. Galt dived, knbcked
the older man's hand aside,
scooped up the 2mm needier,
aimed it at Blum.

“What — what — " Blum said,
then collected himself. He
straightened his clothing, fixed a
stern expression on his round
face, looked challengingly at

Galt.

“Well? You've forced your way
into my office for a reason, 1 sup-
pose, since you'll most certainly
be taken into custody before you
leave here."

“Your Security men are over-
paid," Galt said. “They're expert
at harassing citizens but not so
good when it comes to something
complicated — like watching both
sides of a house."

Blum's features flinched.

“I suggest you give yourself up
at once, Andy," he said. “You've

made your point. FJI personally
look into the conduct of security
affairs—"

"I’m not here to complain about
inefficient police work," Galt
said. "I’m here to take over the
government.’’

BLUM stared across the desk at
Galt, who pulled a chair around
and sat down. The pounding at the
door went on; an intercom screen
on the administrator’s desk
buzzed insistently until Galt
reached across and switched it off.

"Andy,’’ Blum said in a reason-
able, kindly tone, "I’ve know your
parents for thirty years. I remem-
ber the day you were born — ’’
"Make it Mr. Galt— Mickey."
Blum jerked as if he had been
stung by a wasp. "I hardly think
disrespect will advance your
cause — whatever it is. Now, if
you don’t mind, tell me why you’re
here. I suggest you hurry, since
my Security forces' will be in here
at any moment—’’

"I doubt that. Your locks are
pretty solid."

"You can’t possibly believe you
can succeed in this abortive upris-
ing!"

"We have the port, the power
plant. Comm Center. The major
seems to have overlooked a cou-
ple of bets while he concentrated
on Admin House."

"See here, Andy — Mr. Galt.
You were always a level-headed

THE RIGHT TO REVOLT

lad, a good scholar, potentially a
fine citizen and a valuable colo-
nist. What are you doing mixed up
with these anarchists? People like
Daniel Pinchot — known radi-
cals— soreheads — agitators — ’’

"Dan was a Sector Scholar. He
may be impatient with the es-
tablished order, but he’s no fool,
Mr. Administrator. I’m mixed
up with him because it was that or
go on the way we’ve been go-
ing—and that wasn’t good

enough."

Blum’s face shifted to a look of
grim determination. "I hardly
think it’s the function of a hand-
ful of malcontents to determine
unilaterally what is or is not good
enough for the welfare of the col-
ony as a whole."

"And you are?"

"I was duly appointed by the Co-
lonial Administration to carry out
my function; I’ve been trained for
this work; I have more years of ex-
perience in administration than
you have of life!"

"I didn't appoint you."

"You’re intelligent enough to
recognize the fact that specialists
who’ve devoted their lives to the
problems of government and ad-
ministration are better qualified
to run matters than a pack of — of
amateurs who regard any restric-
tion of what they consider their
freedom and righ^as intolerable
burdens!"

"A pack of profit-minded bu-

125

reaucrats and politicians who tell
me 1 have to give up everything
that makes life livable and devote
a couple of years of hard labor to
opening up new territories that
we don’t need or want.”

“You’re a fool, Galt. You don’t
know what you’re talking about!
The economy must expand,
or—”

“Or certain big corporations
back on Terra won’t make as
much as they’d like out of our
blood, sweat and tears.”

‘That’s a childishly simplistic
version of matters. Why — ”

“You mean Parson’s Bay and
General Logistics and North
American Materials won’t show
a profit from opening up the new
sector?”

“Well — of course they hope to!
And why shouldn’t they? They
funded the great bulk of the devel-
opmental work, provided most of
our specialized equipment, sup-
plied technical experts — and still
do-”

“All at a nice return on their
money. And we do the work. Es-
pecially the five hundred names
that got pulled out of a hat to open
Sector Twelve.”

“So, like impatient kindergar-
ten children, you’re going to take
over the nursery and make it all
one long playtime, is that Tt>
Andy — Mr. Galt?”

“The mines will continue to op-
erate, Mr. Administrator. We'll

still export — and don’t tell me how
good and kind Terra is to buy our
products. I know how scarce non-
organically contaminated chemi-
cals are today.”

“Suppose a squadron of Peace
Enforcers arrives to restore or-
der— ”

“That won’t open any mines.”

BLUM gazed at Galt. It was
iquiet in the corridor now. A call
light blinked on the big desk, ig-
nored.

“You want all the advantages of
what other men have built,” Blum
said slowly, “but you want them
without working for them, with-
out effort, without commit-
ment or obligation. Well, the
Universe doesn’t work that way,
my young friend. Nothing is free.
Society isn’t witholding your
birthright. You have no such
birthright — not in the sense you’re
apparently demanding.”

“I have the same birthright any
animal in the wild has,” Galt said.
“To take what 1 can get and hold,”
“So you'll seize the granary and
eat until it’s empty. But who'll re-
fill it for you, eh? You'll grab the
trideo set you've always
wanted— but who'll repair it,
who'll supply the power to run it,
who’ll do the programing and the
acting, who'll pay the bills?”

“We will. We're prepared to
work as hard as required. But we
intend to take the rewards for

126

ourselves — for Colmar — includ-
ing you, Mr. Blum, if you decide
to stay— instead of sending them
off-world for the benefit of corpo-
rate executives we’ve never met,
who've never seen Colmar and
never will.”

“It's the arrogance of it that as-
tounds me,” Blum said wonder-
ingly. “We all have our^obliga-
tions, Galt, whether it pleases us
or not. The food you eat, the
clothes you wear, the entertain-
ments you enjoy, the education
you were given didn’t just pop up
out of the desert. Someone made
them. They represent human in-
genuity and effort— and you’ve
reaped the benefits.”

“That's a debt that’s passed
along from generation to genera-
tion, Mr. Blum. A man owes noth-
ing to the past. Life can’t demand
payment for itself.”

“I’ve always thought you were a
young man with a sense of de-
cency, of justice, of regard for the
rights of others. Tell me, Andy: if
this — revolution of yours suc-
ceeds by some wild chance— what
then? Will you rest easily with
your loot? Can you justify to your-
self theft on a grand scale, and set-
tle down to enjoy your stolen
goodies?”

“You’re taking the position,”
Galt said, “that because the gov-
ernment exists — ”

“Legally,” Blum put in.

“Because the government exists

THE RIGHT TO REVOLT

legally, that I'm therefore obli-
gated to support it— or at least
obey it. But I challenge that state-
ment. Suppose the government
were an outright tyranny: would 1
be obligated to connive at my
own enslavement?”

“That’s absurd—”

“No. A man has a natural right
that supersedes legal obliga-
tions. Overthrowing a legally
constituted government is trea-
son— unless you win. Because if
you win, you change the laws. Then
anyone who supports the old gov-
ernment is the traitor.”

“This is mere sophistry, Galt.
You can’t mean — ”

“The right to revolt,” Galt said
slowly, as if thinking aloud, “is the
most basic right a man has.”
“Activist jargon,” Blum snort-
ed.

“Not if we win — and we have
won, Mr. Administrator.”

Blum’s face flushed. “Nonsense.
A pack of rabble-rousers couldn’t
possibly have — ”

“Wrong. We’re not rabble-
rousers, we’re the rabble itself,
Mr. Administrator. Mr. ex-Ad-
ministrator. Check for yourself.”
Blum turned to his communica-
tor panel, poked keys. His face
tightened as no lights responded
to his calls.

“You can still get through to
Security barracks,’’ Galt said.
“Call Jensen and tell them to put
down their guns.”

127

BLUM punched out the code.

The angry face of Major Jen-
sen appeared on the desk screen.

“Mr. Administrator, thank God
you’re all right!”

“Never mind that," Blum said.
“What's the situation?"

“These hoodlums have invaded a
number of installations, Mr. Ad-
ministrator, but I can clean them
out. Just the same. I'd suggest you
get through to CDT Sector and re-
quest a pair of PE's, triple UTU
priority."

“I’m afraid I'm not precisely at
liberty to do that, Stig," Blum
said. He angled the pickup to in-
clude Galt, gun in hand. Jensen's
face jerked.

“What—"

“The, ah. Revolutionary Com-
mittee seems to have outflanked
us," Blum said.

“Stand fast, Mr. Administra-
tor," Jensen said between
clenched teeth. “My boys'll blast
their way in there and—"

“Lay down your arms, Jensen,'*
Galt cut in, leaning forward. “We
hold every strong point in the col-
ony—"

“I've got forty trained men on
the grounds of Admin House,"
Jensen grated. “You'll never get
out alive, you damned bandit!"

“Don't talk like an ass, Stig,"
Blum said calmly. “He's out-
manuvered you. It's checkmate."
He looked at Galt. “What do you
want from me, Andy?"

128

“Capitulate. Hand over control
to the Committee and step down.
I'll guarantee your safe con-
duct— and Jensen's, too, unless
he does something stupid, like fir-
ing on our men."

Blum stared levelly across at
Galt. “Are you sure this is what
you want? The responsibility—"
“Tell him," Galt said harshly.
Blum turned to the screen. “Lay
down your arms, Stig," he said.
“I'm signing a formal resigna-
tion in favor of Andrew Galt."

TEN minutes later there was a
brief clamor outside the door.
Pinchot's voice came over the
talker.

“Open up, Galt! We're in com-
plete possession.".

Galt crossed the room and re-
leased the locking system. The
door burst open. Gray came
through, grinning a wide fox grin.
He saw Blum, jerked up the wea-
pon in his hand.

Behind him, a gun fired from six
feet; Gray shrieked as the gun flew
from his hand in a spatter of
blood. He went to his knees, grip-
ping his wrist, his hand welling
crimson, as other men crowded
into the room. It was Timmins
who had fired. He came forward
to stand beside Galt.

“Why the hell'd you do that?"
Gray keened. “That's the pig that
had Fry and Len and Jeannie
killed!"

"What did you expect him to do,
give them a safe conduct?'" Galt
said tightly.

"Here, what's going on," Pin-
chot said, pushing forward.
"You'd better give me the gun."
He held out his hand, the other
hand resting on the butt of the pis-
tol at his hip.

"1 thought the idea was to im-
prove government, not to start a
reign of terror,” said Timmins.

"There'll be no more killing,"
Galt said. "Get rid of the gun, Tim-
mins."

Timmins tossed the weapon
aside.

"Who are you to be giving or-
ders?" Pinchot demanded of Galt.

"I'm the only one here with ad-
min training. I'll hold the office un-
til we can stage elections — unless
you want to start your new regime
by killing me and maybe Timmins
and a few others— and somehow I
don’t think a purge will convince
BuCol that you're fit to run the
Colony.'’

Pinchot stared at Galt, eyes nar-
rowed. Then he relaxed, thrust out
a hand.

"Makes sense," he said. "Let's
go, men."

"You took a terrible chance,"
Blum said after the others had
withdrawn.

"I suppose that's part of anv
revolution. Mr. Adminstrator."

Blum sighed. "Call me Mick-
ey." he said. "There are a few

THE RIGHT TO REVOLT

things 1 ought to familiarize you
with before I go."

FOUR weeks later Galt sat be-
hind the big desk, frowning at
the papers before him. He shuf-
fled through them, sighed. There
was a perfunctory tap at the door
and Pinchot came in.

"Afternoon, Mr. Administra-
tor," he said. "What are you look-
ing so glum about? They elected
you, didn't they?"

"I'll step down in your favor any
time, Pinchot."

"No, thanks. I never did like pa-
perwork." He eyed the stack on
Galt’s desk. "In any case, the CDT
and BuCol have both recognized
you as the people’s choice. You're
stuck with it. I'm quite happy as
Chief of Operations." His genial
expression faded a bit as he
spoke. He swung a chair around
and sat down.

"In that connection, Galt — what
about the import program I out-
lined? You've had it three days
now — "

"l know. Luxury goods. Offi-
cial cars, cooler units, trideo pro-
grams."

"So? Don't we have the right to
spend our money to suit our-
selves? Isn't that what the take-
over was all about?"

"Sure. What money?"

Pinchot's face went tight. "The
price of the last shipment of ores,
for example," he snapped.

129

“It all went toward our credit
deficit with Outplanet."

“You expect me to believe
that?"

“You can check the figures with
Anderson if you like. No matter
how many times we add them up
they still come out the same. We're
running in the red - and what
credit we still have has to go for
necessities."

“I heard all that from Ander-
son. That's why I'm here. It's not
good enough, Galt. This isn't why
we threw out BuCol - just to carry
on the same old swindle."

“You can take over any time,
Pinchot." Galt slid a sheet of pa-
per across to the other man. “My
resignation, all ready* for signa-
ture."

Pinchot stared at the document,
pushed it away.

“I don't get it," he growled.
“You're spouting Blum's line, the
BuCol line — "

“It's nobody's line. It's just the
facts, Pinchot. We're exporting
X kilotons of minerals at Y creds
per ton, and we're importing Z
creds worth of basic material.
And we're sliding a little deeper
into the red every quarter."

“They're overcharging us, hold-
ing us up on prices—"

“Negative. They're selling to us
at seven percent under the open
market scale. BuCol policy."

“Then we can raise our
prices—"

130

“Negative again. It's marginal
now. If our prices plus haulage go
above costs of local procurement
and refining, we're out of busi-
ness."

“Then -what in God's name can
we do?"

Galt pushed another sheet of pa-
per across the desk. Pinchot
glanced at it, then stared at Galt.

“Are you right out of your mind?
This is Blum's Opening Order for
Sector Twelve."

“Wrong. It's my order for open-
ing Sector Twelve."

“You can't do it. The people
won't accept it. What will Gray
and Williver— and Pyle and
Tomkin and the others say?
They — we — risked our necks fight-
ing this same crazy scheme."

“We need more income, less de-
pendence on imports. We have to
extend our usable acreage and ex-
pand our mining operations. If you
can think of another way to do if.
I'll welcome the suggestion."

Pinchot's face looked slack and
grayish. “Is this what we took
over — the same old headaches,
only worse?"

“Did we really take over, Pin-
chot?" Galt asked tiredly. “Or did
they con us into standing on our
own feet?"

Pinchot swore.

“I agree," Galt said. Now let's
get to work. I need five hundred
names for Sector Twelve. Any
suggestions ?" •

THE RIGHT TO RESIST

day, Freddy,” Galt said as he sat
down at the table. “A few of my
admirers came by to give me a
nice sendoff for the day. Colmar’s
twentieth anniversary of inde-
pendence.” Galt gave a snort that
was not quite the laugh he had in-
tended.

‘"Don’t take it so hard, Andy,”
Freddy said. He poured coffee,
put a cup before Galt, sat down
opposite him. “You’ve always
done what was best in a tough situ-
ation.”

Galt looked at him sardonical-
ly as he sipped the bitter brew.
“Funny how you assume it wasn’t
flowers they threw, Freddy. Any-
body would think I wasn't popu-
lar.”

Freddy lifted his powerful shoul-
ders. “You can't please 'em all,” he
said.

“It seems I'm not pleasing any
of them.”

“You’re doing what you've got
to do, Andy. The Colony’s a mar-
ginal operation. It’s not your fault
that times are tough. These babies
want it all now, that’s all. They see
too much Interplan trideo, they’ve
got ideas about how life ought to
be fat and soft. They've got to face
up to facts sometime. Colmar's a
poor world. We just can't afford a
three-hour day and welfare cavi-
ar.”

“Try telling that to some Econ

THE RIGHTTO RESIST

(Continued from page 117)

graduate doing his time in the
labor pool.”

“I know; so they gripe. What
about it? If they’d been here back
in the old days they’d have had
something to gripe about. Do they
ever think about what the first peo-
ple here had to face up to, seventy
years ago?”

“Of course not,” Galt said.
“Why should they? These aren’t
the old days. This is now. And
they’re young. They want to live
today, not some time in the next
century. I can’t blame 'em.”

“Sure — and so did your grandad
want to live — and mine. That’s why
they came out here — to nothing.
To make something of it— of a
dead world— something that
hadn’t existed before. They had no
guarantees, no route back. They
had to whip Colmar or die — and
plenty of them died."

“Ancient history, Freddy. Today
they know there’s something bet-
ter than hard work and rationing.
They want it. And Freddy, so do
I—”

“But you're not whining for
it— and one day it'll hap-
pen— you’re working for it like
they did back then. It must have
been a frightening thing, Andy,
when they unloaded from the
freighters and looked around and
saw a dead world, not even a blade
of grass. In seventy years we’ve

131

turned it into a place where a man
can live — but not without effort.
Let ’em gripe, Andy— just so they
pur in their time like everybody
else — like you did.”

“Involuntary servitude. ‘Ty-
ranny’ is what they call it.”

Freddy snorted.

“So? What are you supposed to
do, back down because they call
you dirty names? You know what’s
got to be done, Andy. You're do-
ing it. It takes guts. You got 'em.
More coffee?”

“No, thanks. I might as well go
on down to the office. Maybe
we'll beat the rock-throwers for a
change.”

“If it was me,” Freddy said in
the :ar, “I’d stay home and to hell
with ’em. Let 'em see how things go
after a few days with nobody
making the decisions. They're
complaining now: let 'em see how
it'd be if you. weren't on the job to
untangle the knots — ”

“Don't get carried away,
Freddy. Any competent ad-
ministrative type could do the
same job.”

“Maybe,” Freddy said. “It's not
seeing what you have to do that's
tough; it's doing it when the mob
is yelling for your head. You could
be the most popular man on Col-
mar tomorrow if you'd give in."

“And we'd be bankrupt the day
after. Sure, Freddy. But those are
just facts; they don't have any ap-
peal to the emotions.”

A FEW early pickets gaped as
the administrator’s car swung
in through the open gates. In his of-
fice, Galt attacked a stack of pri-
ority applications: fifty tons of fab-
ricated steel sections for Shaft #
209 versus sixty tons of the same
urgently needed for the exten-
sion to the loading docks; four
loads of feeder fuel in stock to be
allocated among nine agencies,
all yelling for immediate ac-
tion; computer components on
order-for six months by Supply,
demanded by Routing to pre-
vent imminent shutdown of the
entire NW range . . .

Galt looked up at a sharp rap at
the door. Timmins, the executive
officer, poked his head in. Through
the open door Galt could hear
sounds of an altercation.

“Another delegation to see
you,” Timmins said. Galt rose and
went out into the corridor. From
below came voices raised in an-
ger, other voices replying. Feet
clattered on the stairs. A dishev-
eled young man in maintenance
grays appeared, Freddy close be-
hind him.

“Hold it, Freddy,” Galt said.
Both men stopped. “Let him come
up.”

“Chief, he might be armed — ”
Timmins said quickly, but Galt
brushed that aside.

“You want to see me?” he asked
the inturder.

“That's right,” the man in gray

132

said defiantly. He brushed back
his hair, straightened his jacket.
“We’re citizens; we’ve got a right
to be heard.’’

“Who’s ‘we?’ ’’

“The Party." The young man
said it flatly, as if inviting chal-
lenge.

“Come along to the office,"
Galt said.

“Frisk them first," he heard
Timmins say as he turned away.

There were five people in the
delegation, three men, two wom-
en, ranging in age from eighteen
to thirty-five, Galt estimated. He
knew them all by sight, two by
name — not a difficult feat in a
population of thirty thousand. One
of the women— a plump, pretty
girl in nurse's green— stepped for-
ward and offered Galt a folded pa-
per. Timmins, read it over his
shoulder.

“The same old refrain," the exec
said. “Improved public transport,
more entertainment facilities,
shorter hours. It's nonsense — "

“It's not nonsense to us," the girl
said sharply.

“Or to me either, Miss Dolph,”
Galt said. “I'd like to lead an eas-
ier life myself. Unfortunately,
we can't afford it — not yet."

“You've got yours," the man in
gray said. “Official mansion, of-
ficial car, the best of everything — "

“Look here," Timmins started,
but Galt waved a hand to silence
him.

“Let's keep it factual— Jonas,
isn't it? My official residence is a
standard Class Vb unit; I get the
same food, clothing, and power
ration as anyone else. As you
know. As for the car, I used to
walk — until the rock density got a
bit high."

“If you were doing your job the
way you ought to, nobody would
be throwing things," Jonas
snapped.

“I’ve got an idea Freddy was at
the point of bruising you a bit
when I happened along. Does that
mean you had it coming to you?"

“He's a hired goon — that's dif-
ferent."

“What is it you expect me to do,
Jonas, Miss Dolph?"

“Ease the restrictions on life,"
the girl said promptly. “Let peo-
ple enjoy living while they can.
Shorten the work day, give us
some leisure time activities and
facilities, end rationing, increase
consumer imports."

GALT nodded. “Anything
else?"

"Plenty morej' Jonas said.
“End the labor draft. Raise pay,
right across the board. Lift the off-
world travel restrictions, bring in
more outsystem entertainers."

“For what it cost to open this
new Sector," another of the dele-
gation spoke up, a small, timid-
looking man with a bad complex-
ion, “we could have founded a

THE RIGHT TO RESIST

133

program of concert artists that
would have given us some contact
with the cultural life of the Arm."

"Sector Nineteen gives us a ma-
rine agricultural facility," Galt
said mildly. "In twenty years it
may be our biggest food pro-
ducer. We may be able to shorten
the time to self-support capabil-
ity by three decades—"

"We know all the propaganda
lines," Jonas said. "We've heard
all that before."

"Then what are you doing
here?" Galt snapped.

That's easy, Mr. Administra-
tor," Jonas said with a sneer. "We
don’t believe the official line."

"The records are open to the
public," Galt said.

"They can be faked, too."

"Why?" Galt shot back.

"To delude the public."

"Why should I want to delude
the public?"

"For obvious reasons — "

"Name them," Galt snapped.

"All right. To justify your pro-
gram of overwork and underpay,
long hours and no recreation, lux-
ury for the few at the cost of slav-
ery for the many— "

"What luxury?" Galt cut in
sharply. "We've already covered
that particular allegation. It's
nonsense and you know it -and so
does everybody in this room."

"Look, chief, this has gone far
enough," Willis started, but Galt
cut him off.

"You’re here charging me and
the rest of the administration with
a deep, dark plot—"

"You're depriving the people of
their basic rights," Jonas shouted.

"You name one right you're be-
ing deprived of, Jonas, and I'll
personally see that you get a life-
time pension," Galt said.

"All right— the right to a rea-
sonable amount of leisure time,
for openers. The eight-hour day
went out with coal-fired ground
cars."

"What would you call a reason-
able amount of leisure time?"

"Time enough to do a few
things. To have hobbies, play a
musical instrument, visit your
friends — "

"Wrong, Mr. Jonas. That's nice,
maybe, but it's not reasonable.
Reasonable means what's phys-
ically possible. We have just so
much manpower," he went on,
raising his voice as Jonas tried to
cut in. "We have to allocate that
manpower in such a way as to
keep industrial operations going
at the rate required to produce
enough exportable output to
keep the economy afloat. You want
more imported trideos and trav-
eling art shows? Fine. Then we’ll
have to work longer hours, not
shorter."

"Official bullwash," Jonas spat
out the words like a bite of wormy
apple.

"As I said, the records are pub-

134

lie. Look at them or not, suit your-
self. But don't come bursting in
here again with your proposals for
instant utopia until you've done
your homework."

"That's what I thought we'd
get," one of the women said in a
shrill, nervous voice. "A brush-
off. Excuses. We should have
known better than to waste our
time." She glared at Galt with eyes
as sharp as stakes.

"I welcome constructive sug-
gestions," Galt said, meeting her
gaze steadily. "Come back when
you have one."

"We won't be back," Jonas said.
"We're through talking." They
departed, slamming doors.

((D EMIND you of anything?"

-®^Galt asked Timmins when
silence had fallen again.

"Painfully. Except that there
were only fifty of us — "

"Forty-two," Galt corrected.

" — and this time half the popula-
tion is agitating. No one tried to
explain to us; if they had, we
might even have listened."

"Don't count on it. We wanted
change — any change. We got it."

"And all the grief that went with
it. But these people today won't
listen. They remember when we
threw BuCol out; Pinchot and a
few others were promising them
the world. Twenty years later
they're still on short rations.
They're unhappy. And they mean

THE RIGHT TO RESIST

business, Andy. This isn't just a
little band of soreheads—"

"I know all that, Ben. Are you
suggesting I should promise
them pie in the sky? What happens
when they discover it isn't there?"

Timmons looked solemn.
"Andy, for this generation— and
for a lot of people who ought to
know better — you symbolize
everything that's wrong with life.
By removing you, you see, they
can remove their problems — they
think."

"You're suggesting I quit while
I'm ahead?"

"I'm suggesting you quit while
you’re alive, damn it!"

"And do what? Sit back and
watch Colmar die?"

"You've had offers— three in the
last six months that I know of; I
wrote the answers turning them
down. You could still take that
post at Yale, lecturing on prob-
lems of the frontier economy — "

"And read in the fax about how
the Colmar experiment failed.
Ben, have you ever considered
what would happen if we had to
throw in the towel and invite Bu-
Col back in? They'd close the col-
ony down, evacuate us to Ter-
ra—to beehive housing, synthetic
rations — "

"I know. It's unthinkable. And
dammit, Colmar can make it! We
have the minerals, the seas — a
whole world to exploit!" Tim-
mins smacked his fist into his

135

palm. “If they could just see it!
Just give us time!”

“Bringing life to a dead world is
a big undertaking, Ben. Maybe
too big. Maybe we havn’t got what
it takes. But I have to stay and do
what I can — for as long as I can.”
“And be a martyr,” Timmins
said grimly.

“There’s nothing noble about
it,” Galt said. “This is my home-
world. 1 couldn’t survive on Terra
either. I'm fighting for my life; the
only life 1 know.”

“Then don’t throw it away. Let
me recruit an escort for you. I can
get a dozen TSA regulars detailed
from Aldo — ”

“Negative, Ben. Importing for-
eign gun-handlers to protect me
from the people that voted me in
would be the end.”

“Then what in God’s name are
you going to do?”

“Play it by ear — and hope Sec-
tor Nineteen starts paying off in
time.”

“Comes up with a miracle, you
mean.”

“I’d accept a miracle right
now,” Galt said wearily, “if it
could be arranged.”

TWO weeks later Timmins laid
a paper on Galt’s desk. It had
been a time of rising tensions and
near-riots, broken glass — and at
least one assassination attempt
which had put Freddy in the hospi-
tol with third-degree laser bums.

“Weinberg, out at Thirteen,”
Timmins said. “I thought you
ought to see it.” The executive
officer’s face was haggard with
lost sleep.

Galt scanned the paper.
“Livestock? Chickens? What the
devil’s he doing out there, start-
ing a zoo?”

“Experimental animals,” Tim-
mins pointed out. “He wants to
run some kind of tests on them.”

Galt rubbed his eyes. “He knows
we’re on the shortest meat ration
since Colonization,” he said wear-
ily. “I'm surprised at Weinberg.
Tell him no. Remind him he’s out
there to supplement our protein
supply, not deplete it. And ask
him what he's doing about the
slimemould contamination prob-
lem he’s been reporting on.”

Timmins nodded and turned to
go. Galt stopped him before he
reached the door.

“Wait a minute, Ben. Disre-
gard that last outburst. I’m too
damn tired to think straight. If
Dick Weinberg thinks he needs a
flock of goats, damn it, he prob-
ably needs a flock of goats. Set it
up— triple — A priority.”

Timmins nodded again, more
brightly.

“And tell them to save a seat on
the flier for me,” Galt added. “I’m
going out and see what he’s up
to.”

Timmins frowned. “That might
not be a good idea, Andy. There

136

was rioting at the port this after-
noon and — ”

“Set it up/’ Galt snapped, then
grimaced. “I’m sorry, Ben.
Nerves. Just get me on the flier. I’ll
ride out under a stack of old bur-
lap bags if you say so.”

“I’ll set it up,” Timmins said
tonelessly.

THE view from the cargo flier
was a monotonous vista of
eroded ridges, gullied plains, of
rock, gravel and sand, stretching
across ti\e endless miles. After the
narrow green belt of the capital
had been passed — and its sur-
rounding five-mile farm strip-
forty miles of undeveloped des-
ert intervened before the dull
green of a bioadapted valley ap-
peared, far off to the west. An-
other seventy-five miles of arid,
lifeless badlands unrolled be-
neath the flier; then ahead the
curve of the coast and the black-
blue sea beyond. They were with-
in five miles of the Experimental
Station before Galt could make
out the fragile tracings of irriga-
tion ditches, the patterns of agri-
formed fields, the vivid green specs
that were transplanted trees shad-
ing a straggle of buildings. Off-
shore of the station, Galt noted,
the lifeless sea was stained a dark
umber. The flier landed on the
scraped rectangle behind the
sprawling, aluminum-and-white
station. A chill wind blew sand

THE RIGHTTO RESIST

across the open ground to ping
against the flier’s sides with a rest-
less whispering.

Weinberg was there to meet
Galt, a sturdily built, red-haired
man with big solemn eyes and a
wide, downcurving mouth that
belied his brisk optimism of man-
ner.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Adminis-
trator—you bring my goats and
birds and stuff?” he said, pumping
Galt’s hand. “Come on out of this
damned wind.”

The marine ecologist's office,
laboratory and living quarters
comprised a single large untidy
room with stone countertops, a
clutter of glassware, a desk
heaped with papers, a cot, a table
with a hot-plate and dirty dishes.

“Here, sit down, Andy, how
about a cup of coffee and a slice of
cake?”

“Dick, what’s this about animal
experiments? I understand we’re
going to add seafood to our
diet — ”

“Sure, sure. I’ll tell you all about
it. How' re things in the city? I hear
they’re giving you a hard time,
throwing rocks, the works.”

“Things aren’t good. Ben Tim-
mins says all we need is a small
miracle from you to solve every-
thing. You don't happen to have
one in stock, do you?”

“A small miracle, the man
says,” Weinberg said cheerfully,
rattling cups. He poured, dumped

137

things on a tray, brought it over.
Galt took the cup and sipped, ac-
cepted the small plate with the
slice of yellow-brown cake.

“Where do you get coffee?” he
barked.“I thought the last stocks of
luxury imports went last New
Year’s.”

“Try the cake. It’s not too
sweet.”

Galt took a bite; it tasted good.
He hadn’t realized how hungry he
was; but then he hadn’t eaten in-
how many hours?

“Like it?” Weinberg looked as
expectant as a new bride serving
her first meal.

“It’s fine, Dick. But — ”

« A SMALL miracle, the man
** says,” Weinberg said, rub-
bing his hands together. “Come
this way, Andy. I want to show you
something.” The ecologist led the
way through a long room where
half a dozen green-smocked tech-
nicians worked over complicat-
ed constructions of glass tubing
and containers of bubbling liq-
uids. A sharp, burnt-toast odor
filled the air. At the rear of the sta-
tion Galt and Weinberg emerged
on a sloping shelf of beach that led
down to the waterline. Masses of
dull brown scum lay in long win-
drows there. The surface of the sea
was a dark brown, oily-looking,
with sluggish swells.

“You remember the problem I

138

reported I was having with the
slime formation,” Weinberg said.

“I see it hasn’t improved any,”
Galt said. “I hope it’s not interfer-
ing seriously with your work.”

“Fact is, Andy, I’ve about
dropped everything to work on it.
I think I’ve identified it as a mu-
tated Fuligo Septica , probably
introduced on some imperfectly
sterilized glassware from Terra.
We tried high-pressure steam first,
but—”

“Just a minute, Dick. Dropped
everything?’’ Galt's voice was
harsh. “Maybe I haven’t succeed-
ed in making it clear that the mis-
sion of finding food supplements
for the Colmarian diet is abso-
lute top priority—”

Weinberg looked reproachfully
at Galt. “Mr. Administrator,
may I make my presentation?”
His wide mouth quivered, the
corners turning upward in spite
of his obvious effort to hold them
down.

“What the devil are you grin-
ning at?”

“How did you like the coffee?”

“Drinkable,” Galt snapped.
“What—”

“It’s made from the sporangia
phase; the stalks, you understand,
desiccated, ground, and roasted.”

“You made that coffee out
of— this?” Galt prodded a mass of
crusted brown flakes with his toe.

“Uh-huh. The cake was made
from the spores, with an admix-

tured of plasmodium, plus a sweet-
ner.”

“Slime cake?’’ Galt said.

“Of course all this required a
certain amount of processing.
We’re running some ideas in glass,
looking for shortcuts — for com-
mercial quantity production, you
understand. But with a little dry-
ing and compressing, we get
what, unless I flunked Chem 1, is
the best all-around livestock feed
going.” He took from his pocket
a hard, dull-shiny, purple-brown
cake the size of a bar of soap.
“Hence the goats,” he said. “And
the chickens.”

Galt stood as if stricken.
“But — if this is true — ” He took a
deep breath and became brisk.
“Fine. One miracle to order — ”
His voice broke and he cackled in
glee. “Dick, you sneaky bastard,
you’ve just saved a world, damn
your hide!”

“All in a day’s work, Mr. Ad-
ministrator— ” Weinberg, grin-
ning, was gazing past Galt toward
the open desert to the west. “Well,
more visitors,” he said. “Word
must have leaked out — ”

GALT turned; a dust cloud was
boiling toward them, raised by
a speeding vehicle. The car swung
past the station, slid to a halt near
the storage sheds and was im-
mediately veiled by the dust of its
own passage.

“That looks like one of my

THE RIGHTTO RESIST

maintenence carts,” Galt said.
“What — ” There was a shout. A
man at the lab door was waving.

“Call for you, Mr. Administra-
tor. Sounds urgent.”

Galt started toward the build-
ing, Weinberg behind him. Three
men emerged from the dust cloud
now blowing away from the car;
they broke into a run on a course
that would intercept Galt. Some-
thing bright flashed in the hand of
the leader; the flat sound of a gun
cut the air. Galt threw himself
down. The man in the doorway
started out; there was a second
shot and the technician halted,
turned, fell sideways. Galt looked
up to see the second of the new ar-
rivals knock the gunner's arm
aside as he fired a third time, the
slug whining past Galt’s face.

—alive,” he heard. “We can al-
ways kill him later if it works out
that way.”

Galt got to his feet. Weinberg
went to the man who had been
shot, squatted beside him, ignor-
ing an angry command from the
man with the gun. He looked up,
his face pale and bleak.

“Pat’s dead,” he said to no one
in particular.

The third man stood with his two
fellows, all three looking dusty
and windblown, a bit uncertain
now. The wind whined restlessly.

“You, Galt, over here,” the gun-
ner said. “You — ” addressing
Weinberg — ” stay out of the way

139

and you won’t get hurt.”

Galt walked over to the trio.
“Proud of yourself, Jonas?”

Jonas swore and swung at Galt,
knocked him down.

“Any guns inside?” Jonas called
to Weinberg.

“No”

“If you’re lying I’ll kill you. Get
the stuff,” he, said to his compan-
ions. “I don’t want a stick left of
this place to salvage.”

The two went to the car, brought
out packages Galt recognized as
standard melt charges. They hur-
ried toward the entrance to the
station, went past the corpse
sprawled on the sand, disap-
peared inside. An instant later
there were screams; steam boiled
from the entrance. A man ran out,
tatters of what looked like wet
gauze flapping from his face. He
stumbled and went down, lay
thrashing. Galt, still on the
ground, swung his legs, brought
Jonas down on top of him. The
younger man cursed and tried to
bring the gun to bear; Galt caught
his wrist, felt the superior strength
of the other inexorably overcom-
ing his resistance.

Suddenly Jonas was thrown
clear. Weinberg stood over Galt,
breathing hard. Jonas came to his
knees and Weinberg swung his
foot in a short, sharp kick that
snapped the assassin's head back.
He sank down on his face in the
sand.

Weinberg helped Galt to his feet;
his knee was painfully wrenched.
He picked up the gun dropped by
Jonas. Men were coming out of
the station, one still holding the
live steam hose.

“There’s bad trouble back in the
city,” one of the men told Galt. “It
was Mr. Timmins on the box. He
said you’d better get back right
away.”

THE hour was near dusk when
the copter dropper Galt direct-
ly on the grounds of Admin
House, bypassing the noisy crowd
surrounding the building. Tim-
mins met him, looking grim.

“This isn’t just the usual unrest,
Andy,” he said, “it’s a concerted
uprising. Mobs at the port, the
Power Complex — ” he broke off.
“What happened to you?”

“I’ve had a sample. A
demolition team hit the Marine
Experimental Station, killed
Pat Rogan. Weinberg is holding
our old acquaintance Jonas and a
couple of others.”

Timmins swore with feeling.
“They tried to fire the Comm Cen-
ter about an hour ago. We saved it
by the skin of our teeth. There are
enough citizens on our side to
make it a standoff so far; but kill-
ing a man — ”

“Let’s get inside, Ben; I want a
complete status report.”

Timmins finished his account
twenty minutes later.

140

“That’s about it. The best esti-
mate is three hundred activists,
another ten thousand going along
for the ride, ready to jump either
way. That’s damn near half the
population. Opposed to them,
we’ve got a hundred organized
militia with non-lethal weapons
and maybe two thousand volun-
teers with axe-handles and chair
legs.”

“Get some cots set up, Ben. It’s
going to be a long night.”

“What do you plan to do,
Andy?”

“Wait. Maybe by morning
they’ll have cooled down enough to
talk sense to. I have some news for
them.” He outlined the gist of
Weinberg’s discovery.

“But this is what we’ve been
waiting for — even praying for at
odd moments,’’ Timmins said,
running his fingers through his
thinning hair. “Good lord,
Andy — this is the best news you
could have brought — ”

“But nobody out there’s listen-
ing tonight. Relax, Ben. So far
we’re holding our own. Maybe
this will tip it our way.”

All through the night there were
reports of fires, quickly quenched,
roaming bands of slogan-shouting
looters, clashes between vigilantes
and demonstrators which petered
out indecisively. The hours passed.
Galt dozed. Pale light was filtering
through the windows when he was
awakened by a man who burst into

THE RIGHTTO RESIST

the office, without the formality
of knocking. “They’ve fired the li-
brary,” he said. “A crowd of them
got inside the kindergarten, too.
Shall we try to hold it?”

“Let it go,” Timmins snapped.
“We’ve got to concentrate on es-
sential installations.” He broke
off. “Sorry, Andy. It’s your deci-
sion, of course:”

“I agree. What are they really
after, Ben What’s their prime tar-
get?”

“What do you think?” Timmins
snapped. “Admin House. If they
get in here — ”

A MUFFLED explosion in the
near distance punctuated the
remark. Objects rattled on the
desk. Somewhere there was a
sound of breaking glass. Galt
whirled to the window. Smoke was
billowing from a point near the
main gate, which was twisted off
its mountings. Men came stream-
ing through the opening in a
ragged spearhead.

“Where are our, militiamen?”
Timmins yelled and left the room
at a run. Shouts sounded from the
downstairs, accompanied by
heavy thuddings. Galt arrived in
the foyer to find a dozen volun-
teer defenders, all of them smoke-
smudged and bleeding from small
cuts and abrasions, grouped be-
hind the massively barred doors.

“They're starting to get rough,”
one of the men called. “They’ve got

141

guns— a dozen of them anyway.
God only knows where they got
them. Nobody killed yet far as I
know, but that explosion they set
off—”

The pounding at the heavy doors
ceased abruptly. Voices could be
heard beyond the heavy panels,
shouting over the rumble of crowd
noises.

“We’re in a hopeless position,”
a man said. “We’ve done all we
could — these hoodlums mean
business. I say let's get out while
we can.”

“Dammit, you can’t run away
now — ’’ Timmins began.

“Go ahead, Jacobs,” Galt cut in.
“Anybody who wants to leave
now, make it fast. Thanks for your
help.”

All but two of the volunteers de-
parted hastily, some silently,
some with apologies. A chant had
started up outside the doors.

“What the devil are they shout-
ing?” Timmins said.

“Give— us — Galt!" the chant
came through clearly in a mo-
mentary lull in the background
roar. “Give — us — Galt”

“The damned murderous
swine,” Timmins cried. “Andy,
you’ve got to get out. They want a
scapegoat, somebody to blame —
and you're elected."

Galt shook his head; he went up
the stairs to the landing. From the
narrow window there he could see
the drama spread out before him:

142

the ruined gate, the ragged crowd
of rebels fanning out from it,
forming a loose arc fifty feet from
the steps; the packed mob beyond
the walls, craning for a better
look.

“Like ghouls, watching a
beheading,” Timmins said be-
side him. “Don’t the damn fools
know if these anarchists get inside
it’s all over for Colmar?”

“Don’t blame them; they’re just
ordinary citizens caught in some-
thing outside their scope. They’re
waiting for leadership — any
leadership.” Galt glanced at Tim-
mins. “And if we can’t give it to
them, somebody else will.” He
"pointed to the tall man standing
front and center, with a bandolier
of cartridges slung over his shoul-
der, a heavy power rifle gripped in
a brawny fist.

“A malcontent named Brauer,”
Timmins said. “By God, if 1 had a
gun—" He looked at Galt, dropped
his eyes to the pistol in Gault’s
belt. “Let me borrow that, Andy,"
he said in a low, intense voice. “1
can drop him with one shot."

Galt shook his head. “You know
better than that, Ben.”

“If killing one man will stop
this — I say it’s justified.”

“I’d probably agree with you — if
one killing would stop it. The fact
is, we’d be giving them a
martyr— shot from ambush. I
think I know which way the crowd
would go then.” He turned and

went back down the stairs.

“Open it up," he said to the two
men waiting beside the big doors.

“Mr. Administrator, you can't
surrender to that mob," one of
the men blurted. “They'll skin you
alive. That's all they want.''

“Who's surrendering? Get that
door open.''

OVER the protests of Timmins,
men withdrew the locking
bars, swung the portals wide. A
sound went up from the crowd as
Galt stepped out on the portico; it
faded quickly as the big man
named Brauer stepped forward.
He stood for a moment, fingering
the gun in his hands; then he turned
and called over his shoulder:

“Let's go; the rats are throwing
in their hand.'' He started for-
ward, walking with a defiant
swagger, all eyes on him. Those
directly behind him followed;
the crowd edged forward, sliding
silently through the gate, spread-
ing out. Brauer came on. When he
was six feet away, Galt flipped
back his jacket to expose the pistol
thrust into his belt, dropped his
hand to the butt. Brauer stopped
dead. A number of expressions
crossed his face; surprise, anger,
determination. His eyes narrowed.
The rifle in his hands started to
come up.

“Throw that gun down or I'll put
a bullet between your eyes,
Brauer," Galt said quietly.

THE RIGHTTO RESIST

Brauer froze. He glanced at
Galt's face, at his chin, his belt
buckle.

“You crazy, Galt? he asked “Get
out of my way—"

“Five seconds," Galt said.

“You want to get killed?"
Brauer burst out.

“Four," Galt said. “Three.
Two—"

With an oath, Brauer threw
down the gun. A murmur went up
from the crowd. A man behind
Brauer started forward.

“Get back in line," Galt
snapped. The man halted.

“Drop the bandolier, Brauer,"
Galt ordered. Brauer complied.
He looked up at Galt, his face
slowly turning red.

“Come inside," Galt said. “1
want to talk to you." The big man
stood fast. “Move, 1 told you!"
Galt snapped. Brauer attempted a
cocky smile; it became a sickly
grimace. He went up the steps.
Galt followed him inside. When
he glanced back from the door, the
crowd was already melting away.

“You can't get away with this,"
Brauer was saying. “We don't
have to stand for this—"

“I think you will," Galt said.

“We've got rights!" Brauer
yelled. “The power belongs to the
people!"

“That's right," Galt said. “I
agree you're under no obligation
to support the government just
because it's there."

143

“Well, then — " Brauer started.

“Certainly, you have a right to
revolt," Galt went on. “But that
dosn’t mean I'm under any obli-
gation to let you get away with it."

mwhat i can't understand,"
▼ ▼ Timmins said an hour la-
ter, after the militia had reported
all quiet in the city, “is why you
let him get so close before you
stopped him."

“Simple," Galt said. “I couldn't

hit the wide side of a warehouse
with a pistol unless the muzzle
was touching it." He smiled.
“Brauer made the same mistake in
judgment Blum did — they both let
me get too close. And when we
started talking — I had the better
argument. Brauer agreed he would
have made a lousy administra-
tor." He yawned. "Tomorrow
we'll announce Weinberg's dis-
covery— and a new plan for Col-
mar’s economy." •

READING ROOM

on. Whenever the future be-
comes the present — as it must do
constantly — we are not prepared
to cope with it.

A hundred years ago there was
no great problem. A man who had
all his thoughts frozen at the 1850
level was not going to be pro-
foundly shocked by anything im-
pinging on his daily life for the rest
of the century. Oh, he saw an
occasional automobile and heard
that the Wrights had learned to
build a machine that flew. But
such things came into the world
slowly and did not put too great
demands on him. For him the fu-
ture never really arrived; he lived
in a sort of eternal present, where
the verities were indeed fixed.

Today, the future has been with
us for a quarter of a century. The
man who returned from World

{ Continued from page 2)

War II was faced with radical
changes. Television came into his
home; while it entertained, it also
presented a whole world to him,
much of which stubbornly re-
fused to accept his exact values.
The atom bomb had been ex-
ploded and racial extinction, was
now possible — as well as injury to
his children from fallout. Those
dratted scientific ideas had be-
come part of his mental environ-
ment— and of his taxes. And to-
day, all his fixed values are being
shaken to tatters. The younger
generation — grown in a present
that vanishes from them as they
learn it, but a present thirty years
from Mr. Establishment's world,
or thirty years in his mental fu-
ture— all think and talk in ways
that world finds nearly impossible
to follow.

144

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LEE HARDING

MATTARO knew that it had
been an accident — the ship
would never have abandoned him
intentionally. But knowing this was
no way out of his predicament. By
now the Star Wind would be many
millions of miles away and he could
not anticipate any rescue from
that direction.

He was lucky to be alive. The
ship had accelerated suddenly—
and without any prior warning or
due regard for his safety — and the
spatial concussion had thrown him
an enormous distance away from
the rear Doppler turrets that had
been the object of his routine in-

spection. He had tumbled through
space for hundreds of miles before
the miniature computer inside his
cumbersome suit had managed to
stabilize him in a safe orbit around
the beautiful green world that
turned underneath him, and when
he recovered consciousness he
felt sick and confused.

His initial reaction was one of
intense fear and a horror of what
might become of him; but eventu-
ally his rigid training and function-
al discipline reasserted themselves
and he found that he could con-
template the future with a cooler
eye.

152

He was surprised that his suit
had survived the catastrophe. He
fervently thanked the engineers
who had designed and manu-
factured the monstrous and some-
times awkward exoskeleton and
began to check out its functions.
The small computer bank set
immediately in front of his chest
was operating smoothly enough —
otherwise he would still be tum-
bling head over heels through
space instead of drifting in a
stable orbit around the bright
young world below. He cautiously
moved his arms and legs and felt
the enormous limbs of the suit

respond and duplicate his move-
ments; there were no signs of strain
or delay in the mechanical opera-
tions of the suit. A few judicious
bursts from the maneuvering jets
convinced him that they, too, were
functioning smoothly. He eased
off the manual controls and
allowed the computer to edge him
back into orbit. He listened to it
cluck contentedly to itself and
considered his predicament.

He disconnected most of the
neural sensors from his body and
tried to relax. There was ample
room inside the suit for him to feel
unencumbered; he could flex his

153

limbs and move the upper half of
his body quite freely within the
restraining webs that cushioned
his fragile body from external
shocks and minor impacts. He had
not yet begun to panic, but for
some reason he could not pin
down he felt cold. He shivered and
felt afraid. There was no logical
reason why he should feel such a
physical chill: the insulation was
working perfectly and his suit
seemed to be in excellent shape.
So far so good.

Perhaps it was the unaccustom-
ed isolation that brought about this
sudden flutter of his pale flesh. He
had never before felt so much
alone, so unspeakably deserted .
Gone was the warmth~and com-
panionship of his unit. Now all he
had for a friend was the forever
wise and quietly clucking com-
puter in his suit.

“AH right, then, little lady," he
sighed. “Let’s see if you can get me
out of this mess — "

HE HAD enough air to last
him for seven and a half hours,
for several circuits of the world be-
low. At the end of that time he
would suffer a terrifying death; his
suit would become a lonely coffin,
orbiting until such time as it
swung so low that the atmosphere
claimed it and transformed it into
fiery incandescence.

Mattero’s suit was only a
standard maintainance unit, a

smaller version of the enormous
locomotive machines that could
carry a man across hostile alien
landscapes at considerable speed
and protect him from atmospheres
that could soon corrupt his pallid
human flesh; it had very little to
offer in the way of sophisticated
survival gear. It had never been
meant to move very far away from
the immediate vicinity of the ship.

A less intelligent spaceman
would have remained in orbit until
his small reserve of air gave out,
hoping with his last breath that the
Star Wind would arrive back in
time to save him; but Mattaro
knew that no ship could ever con-
template the expenditure of time
and energy that would be required
if it were to turn around and come
back to locate a solitary, mislaid
crewman. Mattaro belonged to
Maintainance — he was a cog
among cogs — and while no one
could ever openly be considered
expendable, the loss of one small
unit could be readily absorbed.
Whatever urgent business had
spurred the Star Wind hastily to
complete its survey of the colonial
world below and move off with-
out first making sure that her hull
was clear of maintainance units,
would also guarantee that the ship
could hardly turn back and come
looking for him, always assuming
that his disappearance had been
registered with the Master Con-
trol.

154

Equally, a less intelligent space-
man might have lacked sufficient
courage to embark upon the
desperate gamble which Mattarp,
with his computer’s ready agree-
ment, had decided to commit him-
self.

Mattaro was logical enough to
realize that his only chance lay in
trying to reach the world below.
The computer had decided that,
with a good measure of luck, he
might make a safe landing on one
of the wide continents that turned
underneath his monstrous un-
moving feet. Enough power was
left in his suit batteries to permit
a reasonably fast descent — no
point in endangering his life any
further by taking it leisurely and
using up more of his vital oxygen
than was necessary. Once he was
safely down he would need every
ounce of reserve air that he could
manage so that he might reach
some habitation before it finally
gave out.

The computer would brake his
fall at the very last minute. It
would send a powerful surge of
energy from the batteries into the
gray coils wrapped around his exo-
waist and quickly nullify the
planet’s attraction. Mattaro knew
that this entailed great risk, but
he believed that with judicious
conversation of his available
power he just might make a safe
landing and the computer en-
dorsed his decision. So, if the suit

FALLEN SPACEMAN

nursed him down and saved most
of its remaining energy for a
single, powerful blast of repulsion
at the very end of his fall— he just
might come out of this alive.

The alternative was unthink-
able. Better a quick, fiery death
than a slow orbit into insanity. At
least this way he could retain some
semblence of dignity, up to and in-
cluding the very end if he failed to
accomplish the desired descent.

He had no idea how he would
make out once he was on the
ground. He knew that this world
was inhabited, that the Star Wind
had been locked in orbit for
several days while its scientists
studied the visible results of a seed-
ing program which his people had
instigated many centuries earlier;
but beyond this he knew npthing.
Mattaro was a specialist con-
versant with every facet of his
trade — and with very little else.
Such was the nature of his time and
his people. What he knew of the
people who had colonized the fresh
young world below had only been
ascertained from ship’s gossip. He
knew that they existed on a
relatively primitive scale: their
society was agrarian and widely
scattered and there had been, so
far, no outside interference in
their affairs. And this was the sum
of his knowledge. But he felt con-
fident that the biological sensors
in his suit would enable the com-
puter to set him down reasonably

155

close to some sort of habita-
tion— as to how he would make out
afterward he had no idea. He
would have to play it by ear. The
important thing was first to get
down.

Some day, years from now, a
ship might pass close by this world
and, if luck would have it, they
would have been made aware of his
disappearence and might even
dispatch a small skiff to see if they
could find some trace of him.

Some day. That could be ages
from now. And in the meantime
he had to survive.

It was with a growing sense of
urgency that he instructed the
computer to begin the descent.

HE FELL for what seemed
like ages but in actuality
amounted to a few short hours. The
world underneath his enormous
articulated legs became clearer.
He entered the upper limits of the
atmosphere and the dark night of
space changed color abruptly. The
nearby sun kindled the air around
him until it glowed with a
tantalizing blueness he found quite
strange. He flexed his limbs inside
the suit and felt the exoskeleton
respond. He was confident that all
would be well.

The air inside the suit became
hot.

“Take it easy," he warned. “I
can’t take too much of this."

The suit slowed slightly. Mat-

taro began to sweat. It was a pro-
cess alien to his conditioning and
it alarmed him to realize that his
body cells were recalling such an
archaic function. The grav coils
continued to throw out a small
measure of power and he grew
alarmed when he saw how much
this token resistance was draining
his batteries. He concluded — and
the computer quickly veri-
fied— that he hadn’t escaped the
concussion of the Star Wind's de-
parture as, well as he had imagined:
a small but continuous energy
drain was going somewhere that
might well prove disastrous.

Oh, my Mother , why hast thou
forsaken me?

His normally placid pulse rate
quickened. He began to panic.

An ocean yawned underneath
him.

"Not there!’’ he screamed.
“Find some habitation — quickly!"

The computer struggled to
oblige but already the energy drain
had reached dangerous propor-
tions.

He was three miles up and fall-
ing rapidly, the computer jealous-
ly withholding as much power as
it could safely risk for the last few
seconds of the terrifying descent.

It was so hot inside the suit he
could hardly breathe.

Now he was inland and falling
at a steep angle toward a densely
populated forest. The world be-
low looked green, luxuriant and

156

very frightening. There were no
signs of human habitation.

Would he ever make it alive?

Two miles.

One.

Falling faster all the time, the
wind tearing at his suit like a
howling banshee.

Mother , help me! I'm going to
die. I don't want to die . . . out
here . . . like this!

Where were the shining cities his
people had spun between the stars,
the magic wonderlands he had
known as a child? Where was the
beauty of all the things he had ever
known and loved?

Gone.

There was only this crawling
world at his feet with some offer of
hope; this clumsy ball of mud and
water lumbering around a parent
sun like some bemused and
indolent child; this virgin world
fresh from the furnaces of space
which man, in his curiosity, had
sown with his own seed and stood
back in the shadows of the cen-
turies to observe.

For the first time in all his long
and precisely ordered life Mattaro
became conscious of what living
really meant to him. For a mo-
ment his eyes widened with some-
thing close to horror, like the eyes
of one who has seen a vision and is
incapable of acting upon what he
has seen; then his mind snapped
cruelly back to the present.

He was now descending verti-

FALLEN SPACEMAN

cally and at a frightful rate toward
a small clearing in the forest. The
computer waited until his feet
were only a few hundred feet away
from the tops of the trees before it
fed the full remaining power into
the grav coils.

The suit shuddered and rocked
like a thing gone mad as it fought
to decelerate and repulse the
gigantic mass of the world below.
The suddea application of energy
sent the monstrous suit dancing
and jiggling across the sky; it
shook Mattaro’s body so much
that, in spite of the protective web-
bing that held his body in thrall, he
thought it might crack open like an
eggshell and spill his mortal in-
sides all over the controls. The
computer struggled to stabilize
these wild gyrations and bring the
suit safely down to the surface of
the planet.

He almost made it. The repul-
sion field had evened itself out and
he had begun to drop towards the
clearing again. He could see the
topmost branches of the tallest
trees moving past his faceplate
and he began to relax. His night-
mare was over. And he had even
begun to smile — a little hysteri-
cally— when the power finally gave
out.

He fell like Icarus.

TPHE fishing had been bad all
day, so Jarvis had withdrawn
from this commitment and had

157

sprawled out beside the stream,
his arms behind his head, and had
contented himself with a little
doze and a modicum of thought.
He had wedged his rod into a
convenient tree stump by the wa-
ter’s edge and left the line drifting
casually downstream; if a fish
proved foolish enough to go for his
lure a small bell attached to the
float would summon him from
sleep. But the sun was warm and
encouraged idleness and he had
only caught two miserably small
fish all morning.

A small pouch of wine lay beside
him, some sliced rolls and some
sausage in a wooden basket, and
that was what fishing was really all
about. He had eaten most of the
food and drunk a goodly measure
of the wine when he was roused
from his slumber by something he
could not understand.

Then he saw the dark speck high
in the clear sky and heard the high-
pitched, keening cry that seemed
to accompany its fall. It grew
from a dot the size of a bird into
something gigantic and terrifying
and out of place and- his mind — a
little dulled by the amount of
warm wine he had quaffed— was
slow to react.

Jarvis was no longer young. The
sun had tanned his wrinkled skin a
deep shade of brown and his brow
was heavy with the burden of years.
He had lost count of the seasons
he had walked through and his

158

mind, like his limbs, had lost a
good deal of vigor. But he had
never before seen an object like
this falling out of the heavens—
and its probable point of impact
would seem to be only a short
distance away on the other side of
the stream.

He sat up, startled, and
scrambled to his feet as the object
grew large in the sky and fell to-
ward the ground at an incredible
pace. His fishing was forgotten
while he stood, transfixed and
spellbound. When the thing was
almost at the point of crashing in-
to the upper levels of the forest it
shuddered suddenly and came to a
halt in mid-air. Next it performed
an insane jig across the sky,
dancing about over the top of the
trees like something gone mad.
Jarvis took a step backward and
nearly lost his balance. He could
see it clearly now — and he did not
like what he saw. Its general shape
was that of a man and it. flung its
limbs about in a grotesque parody
of a man possessed.

It stilled. Jarvis watched, open-
mouthed, as it glided across the
tree tops — toward him.

He backed away. The creature
looked like something fetched from
a nightmare conjured up by the
foulest home brew imaginable. He
prepared his skinny legs to run
and just as he was about to turn
and thrust them into frantic
motion — the thing fell.

It crashed down through the
forest as though it weighed several
tons. He could hear it tearing a
pathway through the tightly
packed branches: a terrible

screeching sound such as a
monster might make, fighting for
its life. The sound of the impact
was thunderous and the ground
shook as the creature tumbled to
it, unseen.

A flock of birds rose screaming
from the scene of the impact. For
a while they circled wildly around
the great rent in the trees, calling to
each other in agitation, then they
flew off and dispersed. A lazy
column of dust began to creep up
into the sky where the creature
had fallen.

JARVIS waited for something
more to happen. But time went
by and only the familiar warm si-
lence of the woods reestablished
itself. He fidgeted. He rubbed his
eyes and wondered what it was he
had really seen and what he should
do about it. Perhaps he had drunk
too much and scrambled awake
with .the vestiges of a bad dream
still clinging to his thoughts.

But the sounds of the screaming
birds still echoed in his memory,
and he was not a man to imagine
such elaborate monsters.

I will go and discover what man-
ner of creature it is that falls from
the sky and makes such an awe-
some noise . . .

Having made his decision, he
packed up his fishing rod and pro-
ceeded to wade across the shallow
section of the stream. He reached
the other side, dried his feet on a
deep patch of grass, pulled on his
sandals and strode into the forest
to locate the fallen object.

His search took him some dis-
tance into the trees— somewhat
further than he had expected—
where the thick trunks pressed
close together and the ground was
always shrouded in%deep shadow.
The undergrowth was sparse at this
time of the year and he found no
difficulty in making progress— yet
he moved cautiously, having no
idea what to expect.

It took him some time to locate
the object, mainly because it
became difficult for him to hold to
his original line of sight now that
he was deep into the forest. But the
deep, jagged cleft that the thing
had carved down through the trees
was a beacon to his questing eyes:
through this tortured passageway
the sunlight found ready access
and Jarvis quickened his pace
when he was near enough for the
light to seem a ragged pillar,
beckoning.

Approaching the point of im-
pact he slowed down and came to a
halt. His listened, but could hear
no sound. He summoned his
courage and moved forward,
wondering what he might find.

The creature had fallen on its

159

FALLEN SPACEMAN

side and lay there staring at him
like a crippled metal ogre. Its
great legs were twisted underneath
its massive trunk and its head was
swung round at an incongruous
angle. Instead of a face only a
single polished disc stared back at
him.

Jarvis drew in his breath. The
creature was at least three times
bigger than a man and its body
was covered with all manner of
shiny protuberences, some of
which had broken or been sheared
off by its dreadful fall.

He carefully made a wide cir-
cuit around the creature before he
became emboldened enough to
move closer and examine the life-
less humanoid in greater detail.
He might be an old man but he was
no superstitious fool. He rec-
ognized this creature as a
machine, some sort of mechanical
contrivance, the meaning of
which was as yet lost to him. But he
was determined to discover more.

Why, here were massive arms of
steel that could have crushed him
like a cockroach. And these
legs — what mighty engines drove
them across the face of the earth?

The creature still did not move.
The fall had either killed it or
knocked it senseless for a while.

But from where had it fallen?
And what was it doing here?

Jarvis moved closer. He shook
his head in amazement as he noted
the immense girth of the creature

and followed the line of one mighty
shoulder until his eyes fastened
upon the gigantic metal head. It
was several times larger than a
man's and in the center was the
bright circle that had first attracted
his attention.

The creature was lying on its
side, its “face" pointing towards
him. It took but a short step for
him to be able to lean forward and
peer down into that enigmatic pool
of light. He looked past the grimy
surface of the faceplate and at the
pale white face on the other side.
The creature's eyes were closed
and its mouth was open; a faint
dribble of blood welled from its
mouth and trickled down its chin.
Its skin had the same pale, trans-
lucent quality as the belly of a fish.

Jarvis recoiled in surprise and
hastily crossed himself.

He knew beyond doubt that he
had looked down upon one of the
space people.

His legs began to shake. With-
out wasting another moment he
backed away from the fallen space-
man and turned around and ran as
fast as he could back to the village.

MATTARO regained con-
sciousness and thought. I'm
alive! And felt the great waves of
pain begin to eat away at his mind.
He winced, closed his eyes and
wondered how much of him had
survived. He ached all over but
none of his limbs fell broken: the

160

webbing had held. His left leg was
bent at a painful angle but he
could, with very little effort, with-
draw it from the exoskeleton and
give it some ease. The rest of his
body felt numb and bruised. His
head ached abominably.

He tasted blood in his mouth and
ran his tongue quickly around in-
side. No broken teeth; just some
torn sections of his cheek where he
must have gripped them in agony
during the final seconds of his
fall. Nothing to worry about.

He was alive!

Happily, he began to explore the
condition of his suit. He could get
no sense out of the computer; it
was sullen and silent. This caused
him some concern. If the com-
puter turned out to have been
badly damaged he was as good as
trapped. Only the computer could
activate the suit and get it mov-
ing— or open the access gate in the
back of the suit. And if his power
reserves were negative . . .

Had he come so far to find him-
self in a situation just as hopeless
as the one he had fled?

He tried to calculate how much
air he had left. But with no idea
how long he had been uncon-
scious this was an impossible task.
And the computer couldn't help
him.

He knew some sort of settle-
ment was nearby, otherwise the
computer wouldn't have chosen to
set him down here. But how could

he be sure that anyone had
witnessed his hasty descent — and
what would they make of it if they
had?

His mind — already accustomed
to dealing with an impossible
situation and dulled by the im-
pact of his fall — tried to devise
some worthwhile plan of action.
He waited until a full measure of
feeling had returned to his limbs,
then flexed them experimentally.
He thought that he could detect a
faint murmur of activity inside
the computer casing and this made
him hopeful. He tried again to set
the suit moving; he moved his legs
about inside the exoskeleton but
only found resistance. The suit re-
fused to be budged.

After a while he gave up and
considered the alternative.

“Open the access hatch," he di-
rected.

No acknowledgment was forth-
coming from the silent computer.
The vital panel directly behind
Mattaro didn't budge an inch.
Sweating, he repeated the com-
mand.

"Open the access hatch."

For just a fraction of a second
something stirred inside the
damaged brain of the computer.
Perhaps some last measure of
residual energy prodded the ma-
chine into a simple gesture of
assistance and, after this miserable
erg of power had been dissipated,
it slumped back into immobility. '

FALLEN SPACEMAN

161

Behind Mattaro the access hatch
had begun to move. It had swung
open a fraction — and stayed so.
The bitter alien air creeping into
his suit confirmed the fact.

Mattaro swore. He repeated the
command over and over again and,
when this proved ineffective, with-
drew his arms from the exo-
skeleton and beat upon the weighty
access hatch with what strength he
could exert from his awkward
reach. But it would not be moved
any further.

He could still hear a threshold
whirr of activity inside the
computer, but he wasn’t sure that
the sound was genuine — it could
have been a product of his own
wishful thinking.

He felt light-headed and
slumped back into the webbing.
Strange, but he couldn’t recall feel-
ing like this before. Perhaps it was
the fall— and the air. He could feel
it stinging the inside of his nostrils
and coursing down into his lungs.

Of course — that would explain
his peculiar light-headedness. It
was the foul, unfiltered air of this
damned planet that was making
him feel so strange. But it was the
only air he could depend on and it
was better than none.

He kept hoping that the com-
puter might eventually reorganize
itself and get him out of this mess.
In the meantime he was alive and
reasonably well off. The next mis-
fortune he would have to face

would be hunger — and to alleviate
that he would have to find some
way of getting out of his suit.

"‘Open the access hatch,” he
mumbled. “Open the access
hatch — ”

But the hatch remained
stubbornly at its fixed position.

Through the dust-shrouded face-
plate he could make out the wide
trunks of the trees and, in the dis-
tance, some patched were the sun-
light played on some branches in a
clearing. The inside of the suit had
cooled and that was something he
could be thankful for. He could
have come down in the tropics of
the planet and might have had to
endure a slow roasting before
nightfall — or he could just as
easily have been dumped into the
sea if the power had given out
earlier. There were plenty of
alternatives, all right. But here he
was and, in one way or another, he
was still alive.

In one way or another . . .

He kept talking to the com-
puter, trying to cajole it back into
some useful activity. He still
wasn’t convinced that his cards
had run out and he was determined
to shake some life back into the
stubborn little machine.

It was some time before he
noticed the dark faces peering
down through his faceplate.

AT FIRST the townspeople
thought that Jarvis had been

162

drinking too much, or had been
taken by the sun; but when they
saw that he was indeed sober and
that it had been a vision and not the
heat of the sun that had dazzled his
mind, then some of his excitement
began to carry over to them.

Nobody had ever seen one of the
space people— at least not for
generations. The relatively short
recorded history of their world
was filled with the memory and
mythology of the creatures who
watched over them, but no one liv-
ing had actually seen one of them
at first hand, as Jarvis insisted he
had.

“It's out there, in the forest just
beyond the stream," he told them.
“It fell down out of the sky and — "

“And there was a man inside,
you say?" somebody asked.

“No. I say there was a space-
man inside. He was all pale— kind
of like a grub inside a shell."

They hastily crossed themselves
and, forming a citizen's com-
mittee, herded Jarvis off to meet
the town council. These seven men
were older and wiser than anyone
else in the village and it fell to them
to make all the important de-
cisions.

Jarvis faced the mayor unflinch-
ingly and repeated his story in de-
tail. The council listened atten-
tively, prepared to be skeptical.

“Could you describe this ma-
chine?", the mayor asked. He was
old and arthritic and often queru-

FALLEN SPACEMAN

lous, but his fancy had been cap-
tured by this loafer’s confession.
“In detail, if you can."

“Well, it was shaped like a man,
only much bigger." Jarvis made an
awkward diagram with his hands,
a gesture that was meant to imply
gigantic dimensions. “It had two
arms and two legs and a monstrous
head that — "

The mayor swung around in his
chair and conferred with his coun-
cilmen. An air of portentous
gravity descended upon the dark-
paneled room; Jarvis waited
nervously for a decision. From the
expressions of grave concern he
could detect on the faces of the
council, it seemed that they were
prepared to accept his story at
face value.

“Wait outside, please, Jarvis,"
the mayor requested. “We will join
you in a moment and then you will
take us to your discovery, so that
we may all see this creature at
close range."

Jarvis bowed respectfully and
went back outside to where a great
number of townspeople had
already assembled around the
humble civic center.

Mayor Dunstable led his coun-
cilmen deep into the ancient cel-
lars of the town hall. They paused
outside a stout wooden door,
crossed themselves three times,
then held their positions while the
mayor rose and unlatched the
heavy wooden bar of the door

163

and slipped softly inside. Once he
had disappeared and the door had
been discreetly closed behind
him, the councilmen sat cross-leg-
ged and assumed a posture of silent
meditation.

It was dark inside the Shrine.
The only light came from a soli-
tary flame set in an ornate silver
chalice upon the altar. The mayor
kneeled just inside the threshold
and offered up a few precious mo-
ments of his lifetime in respectful
meditation. The appropriate ritual
completed, he rose and walked
boldly towards the altar.

A half a dozen steps closed the
distance. The Shrine was small
and had never been intended to
accommodate more than one man,
and he the supreme arbiter of the
township.

Dunstable ascended the three
short steps leading up to the altar
and reached out for the deep glass
case that rested immediately in
front of the chalice. Underneath
the dusty lid the faded face of the
Handbook was kept securely
locked away from prying eyes.
Dunstable ran his arthritic fingers
along one side of the case until the
personality-keyed lock snapped
open the glass lid. He sighed,
whispered some appropriate
words of thanks and raised the lid.
The Handbook was exposed and
his hands shook as he reached for
it.

He handled the ancient volume

with reverence. In all his long
period of office he had only had
occasion to consult the holy tome
thrice before. The book held all his
people's past and all their fu-
ture— but its wisdom had to be
used sparingly and only when all
other knowledge failed or it would
turn to poison. Its random and un-
restricted use on other planets — in-
cluding the place of human
origins — had destroyed men’s
minds and turned them against one
another.

BREATHING heavily, Dun-
stable consulted the index, turn-
ing the heavy textured pages of the
Handbook with loving care. It
was so quiet in the Shrine that the
sound of his own excited breathing
seemed monstrously loud and out
of all proportion.

He studied the relevant pas-
sages of the text for some time,
reading slowly in order to impress
each vital piece of information
upon his no longer agile memory.
Sometimes he nodded sagaciously
to himself or smiled at some
particularly enlightening snippet
of information — on other oc-
casions his eyes widened mo-
mentarily 'in shock and surprise.
The Handbook held many
dazzling secrets that were not
destined for the simple minds of
this world.

When he had satisfied his
curiosity he reverently closed the

164

book and relocked the glass lid.
He bowed and crossed himself
three times to give himself time to
erase irrelevancies from his mind,
whispered a short word of prayer
for the fallen spaceman and then
went outside to rejoin his council-
men.

He summoned them from their
meditations briskly: “Very well,
gentlemen, now we may proceed."

Jarvis led the way. He took them
by way of the river road, the
councilmen breathing heavily
from the unaccustomed exertion.
A small army of inquisitive towns-
people followed at a respectful
distance. News of Jarvis’ dis-
covery had traveled fast.

The machine had not moved
from where Jarvis had found it. It
lay at the bottom of the ragged
shaft in the trees and faced them
with its lifeless eye.

The mayor drew in his breath
sharply. He murmured the ap-
propriate words prescribed by the
Handbook and crossed himself
three times. His councilmen stood
silent and watchful. Behind them,
clustered in small groups among
the trees, the hundred or more
curious onlookers kept a cautious
distance and did not need to be
dissuaded from coming any closer.
The spaceman made no response
to the mayor’s greeting.

“You see," Jarvis said, “it
doesn’t move. Perhaps it can't
move.’’

The mayor nodded. “Very
likely.’’ He moved closer and
walked a careful circuit around
the massive creature, drawing
upon his recent reserves of mem-
ory of the Handbook to help him
identify the exact nature of the fal-
len object.

"It is a spaceman, isn’t it?’’ Jar-
vis asked.

Dunstable waited until he had
completed his study of the object
before he commented. He looked
up through the great, broken shaft
in the forest towards the sunlit
sky.

"It is, Jarvis,’’ he agreed

There was no point in denying
what was self-evident. He had
stepped close and looked through
the dusty faceplate and had seen
the pale white face that Jarvis had
spoken of. The eyes had been
momentarily closed, but the
identity of the creature had been
unmistakable.

By now the other councilmen
had crowded close. "My friends,"
Dunstable informed them, "Jarvis
had indeed discovered one of the
space people. How he came here
we do not know. He has fallen
from the sky and it has been our
privilege to find him. Aet us
pray— "

With one accord all bowed their
heads while the mayor intoned
words from the Handbook whose
meaning he himself did not fully
understand, though they should

165

FALLEN SPACEMAN

have evoked a response from the
object on the ground.

But the spaceman did not move
and Dunstable began to wonder if
the visitor from the skies were alive
or if the terrible fall had killed him.

His prayer completed, the mayor
lifted his head with a slight sug-
gestion of impatience. Around
him the woods were alive with
peering, frightened faces. He
motioned them to come closer so
that they might hear what he had to
say,

“My good friends, this is indeed
a wondrous day for us. This — this
machine you see here is what is
known as a ‘space suit/ It is meant
to protect the space people from all
sorts of dangers — remember, their
empire is vast and beyond our
comprehension; it accommodates
many thousands of worlds like ours
and many more where environ-
ments are hostile and dangerous.
They must protect themselves
from inhospitable climates and
even airlessness — and they have
evolved these miraculous uniforms
in order to move without diffi-
culty from world to world/'

While he spoke he moved closer
to the fallen spaceman and
indicated certain aspects of the
massive space armor. “As you see,
this suit is many times larger than
the man inside, yet these great
metal limbs respond effortlessly to
his movements and endow him
with the ability to perform

prodigious feats that would other-
wise be beyond his capabilities. In
a sense the machine is alive and
ordinarily should respond to — "

“But how did he get here?"
someone interrupted. It was a cry
from among the many faces
pressing closer through the trees.

Dunstable hesitated. “We can't
be sure. Perhaps he was working
somewhere in the sky." He
gestured overhead.

“And he fell from thereV'
Another incredulous voice.

Dunstable frowned. Just how
much information might he
safely — and with good intentions
— divulge? The Handbook left
much to his judgment. He knew
from it that mighty ships moved
between distant worlds and that
some day — in an unimaginable
distant future — the descendants
of his people would evolve suffi-
ciently in knowledge to lay claim
to a similar heritage. It seemed
quite likely that one of these won-
drous sky chariots might have
been passing nearby when the
spaceman fell. Dunstable had used
the prescribed words to arouse the
visitor, but perhaps there was a
limit to what he could tell his peo-
ple. The words, of course, hadn't
worked.

“He fell — and that is all we
know," he replied.

“But is he alive?'' another asked.

The mayor raised both hands in
a gesture for silence. “That we

166

must now ascertain/' He nodded
towards Jarvis. “Perhaps you
found him for a reason. He may
respond to you. Take a closer look,
will you?"

Jarvis grinned. He basked in his
new importance. He strode con-
fidently to the machine and leaned
over so that he was peering closely
into the faceplate. A few of the
councilmen followed to looked
cautiously over his shoulder.

It was some time before Jarvis
realized that the creature's eyes
were open and that he was staring
out at them — and not quite seeing
them. Something unseen seemed
to have passed between them.

Jarvis jerked back in surprise.
The councilmen quickly got out of
the way. They looked discon-
certed.

“He is awake," Jarvis reported.
“But he does not seem to see us."

The mayor stepped forward and
corroborated Jarvis' observation.
And as he looked down and deeply
into the pale, blank eyes of the
spaceman he felt an unpleasant
chill shake his body. He remained
hunched forward and staring for
some time, then stood aside and
motioned his fellow Councilmen
to step forward so that they might
each, in turn, look with reverence
upon the unfortunate creature. If
the spaceman was conscious of
this solemn parade of faces in front
of him then he made no move to
acknowledge what he saw.

FALLEN SPACEMAN

We must work quickly , Dun-
stable realized, or it may be too
late to help him ...

He summoned one of the near-
by villagers — an adventurous lad of
early years — and sent him back to
the village for the town physician
and blacksmith. The blacksmith
was to bring his strongest and most
reliable tools and the physician to
arrange for a pallet to be brought,
so that the spaceman might be
gently transported to a place of
seclusion and rest — if he could be
rescued from the gigantic space-
suit that could soon become a cof-
fin.

While he waited anxiously he
supervised the curious villagers
into a long, slow-moving column
that filed cautiously past the
gigantic metal head and looked
furtively in through the dusty face-
plate at the pale, unsmiling face of
the spaceman.

MATTARO was conscious — in
a vague sort of half-life — of
the strange faces peering down at
him. They were like dreadful fig-
ures in a dream; the faces all
screwed up with time, skins
scorched a dark, unpleasant color
by the naked radiation of their sun
—he could not find it in him to ac-
cept them as human beings.

Mother , my mind is on fire . . .
His body was covered by a dense
film of sweat. Drops of it had
formed above his eyes and splashed

167

down, making it difficult for him
to see. His breathing was shallow
and irregular; his mouth was dry
and his limbs burned with some
strange internal fusion he could not
understand.

Mother , am I dying?

His time was running out — had
run out. He was breathing alien
air — deadly, unfiltered — and it
was having a terrifying effect
upon his sterile metabolism. A
hundred unseen bacteria had
already invaded his bloodstream
and each minute added more. In no
time at all he would be reduced to a
sick and festering hospital
case — unless they, those people
outside whom he loathed, some-
how got him out of here anchplaced
him in some sort of rigid
quarantine and purged his weaken-
ed body of the microscopic in-
vaders. But what standard of
medicine could he expect from such
people?

Probably little better than primi-
tive herbalism, he thought, and
wondered why his burning mind
did not react more fearfully to this
supposition. Perhaps he was
rapidly losing the capacity to care,

Time passed and the strange
faces no longer paraded past his
faceplate. Only occasionally did
one Or two — with which he had be-
come familiar — press forward,
perhaps to monitor his rapid
deterioration. Why don't they do
something?

Instead of just watching him and
haunting him with their archaic in-
competence.

Help me, his mind cried out.
Cant you see I need help? I'm
dying, don't you see that? Can't
you see that?

And for himself alone: Mother,
am I really?

Had he survived his desertion
and his incredible descent only to
have what was left of him burned
alive by these terrible alien
bacteria? Was there no way for him
to . . .

He could feel his mind slipping
away, his conscious thoughts dis-
integrating; the possibility of logi-
cal, sequential thought became
lost to him. His hands ceased their
occasional fumbling with the dead
controls and he slumped back in-
to the fiery well that was his world.
He closed his eyes and fell into a
deep sleep, surrounded by the fires
and fury of a hell that had only pre-
viously existed in the unplumbed
depths of his racial memory.

BLEEKER, the blacksmith, eyed
the space suit doubtfully. “I
haven’t any tools that can open
that thing,” he announced. “Just
take a close look at the metal. I’ve
never seen anything like it.”

“What about the faceplate?” the
mayor asked. He had become
agitated; their time was running
out. “Could we — ”

“Not unless you want to mash

168

him about and kill him. The stuffs
too tough to cut — or for a couple of
taps to crack it open."

"There’s some sort of opening
around the back," Jarvis said.
"I’ve been looking real close and it
seems to me that there’s some sort
of hatchway there. It’s opened
slightly.’’

The blacksmith walked around
to the other side of the suit and
hunkered down in the dirt so that
he could inspect the narrow open-
ing the old man indicated. It was a
narrow crack about three and a
half feet long and it did indeed look
like part of a hatchway. But the
rest of it merged so smoothly with
the gigantic carapace that it was
difficult to gauge its shape.

"Well, what do you say?"
Dunstable asked. "Can you lever
that open?’’

The blacksmith pursed his heavy
lips and scowled. ""Wouldn't like to
say. But I’ll give it a go." He stood
up, spat on his hands and rubbed
them together. ‘‘Get as many
strong lads as you can find — we’ll
be needing them. If we take it in
shifts then we just might budge it.
But it’ll take strength if I’m to
judge from the workmanship of
this thing.’’

The mayor leaned closer and,
out of sight of the rest of the towns-
people, breathed a confidence:
‘‘We have to get him out, you
understand. Our air is dangerous
to his lungs; it could very well kill

FALLEN SPACEMAN

him. And if we don’t get him to the
physician in time — ’’

The blacksmith nodded. "Well,
no use standing here. Let’s get, on
with it . .

He walked back to where he had
deposited an assortment of his
tools on the bare ground. He
selected a long crowbar and
gestured to one of the young men
who had assigned themselves to
his direction. "I have several more
of these in my barn. Go fetch
them — as fast as you can. We’ll
have need of them.’’

The youth— and one other-
hastened away.

Bleeker gripped the crowbar in
his hands and moved back behind
the gigantic space suit. He found
the narrow aperture of the hatch-
way and worked the sharp point of
the instrument an inch or so into
the crevice. He leaned with all his
weight upon the other end but the
hatchway — if that was what it
was — refused to budge.

‘‘Some help here, lads," he
called out.

And they rushed forward to par-
take of this unaccustomed ritual.

MATTARO felt and heard the
blows and curses and the
hammering at his back, but he did
not mind. Half in and half out of
this grotesque world, with his mind
on fire and his body weeping a
rank, offensive fluid from every

169

pore, he found time to dream in his
fiery hell.

Through the flames he could see
the great ships he had traveled with
and the marvelous worlds his peo-
ple had made for themselves be-
tween the stars, like delicate
crystaline webs spun across the
eternal night. His skin tingled with
affectionate memory of the
warmth beamed down by the tiny
suns they had kindled to illumi-
nate his world.

Mother , why hast thou forsaken
me?

Accidentally. She did not know.

You should have known , Moth-
er. Dont you see? My mind is on
fire. Vm burning up, one small cell
at a time...

He saw his home world moving
through space, felt the benign
gravitation beneath his feet and
basked in the emancipation of his
people. He was space-born and
had never known the feel of a
planet underneath his feet or the
burden of an unvarying gravity.
His environment had been
efficaciously controlled and he
had never been exposed to the
remorseless ravages of time and of
the seasons that had made the
faces of the colonists so gaunt and
their lifetimes so short. And now
he had fallen from this state of
grace.

In his burning mind he saw his
world turn and move toward him.
Attendant suns flickered and died;

the dark heavens disappeared and
his world shimmered and opaqued
as it moved from one realm of
space into another so that it might
cross light-years in an instant.
Mother, are you coming for me?
Mother?

It was getting darker outside.
Had the sky become dull as it pre-
pared this world for dusk or had his
eyesight betrayed him?

Mattaro was afraid.

IT TOOK them nearly two hours
to open the stubborn hatchway.
Two hours of sweating and cursing
and sheer exhaustion. The black-
smith remained doggedly in com-
mand, seeing his youthful helpers
come and go, applying their
determined strength to the crow-
bars and then despairing— and
each time moving the doorway a
few millimeters more.

Finally it was wide enough for
them to perceive the man inside
and for them to reach in and grasp
his shoulders. The spaceman did
not stir: his mind — and his
strength — seemed to have failed
him.

They eased him from the pro-
tective webbing as gently as they
could and carefully lowered him to
a pallet.

The villagers stood back in awe.
He seemed so pale and fragile with-
out his fantastic carapace, like a
chrysalis ripped before its time
from its cocoon; but even then his

170

body seemed to radiate a supernal
quality that was quite overpower-
ing.

Some fell to their knees and
prayed. Women wept and small
children hugged their mothers'
skirts and looked out upon the
creature with one eye closed. A
mornful chant went up from a
group composed of older women;
the dirge was caught up by the rest
of the villagers and intoned with a
deep sense of forboding.

The town physician bent over the
wasted spaceman. He rolled back
each eyelid in turn with his thumb
and clucked disapprovingly. He
rose, crossed himself and directed
the two men he had assigned as
carriers to hasten about their
business.

“Take him to my surgery," he
directed. “Quickly."

The two men trotted off. A path
opened for them between the awe-
struck villagers. The mayor and his
councilmen hurried after the litter
as best as they could. The physi-
cian, a few years their junior, set a
cracking pace they found difficult
to emulate. Jarvis hurried after
them, a look of deep concern on
his wizened face.

After a short pause, during
which the doleful chant fragmented
and died, the villagers moved after
the outre procession, like tufts of
weed sucked into a vacuum left by
a passing wind.

The blacksmith Carefully packed

up his tools, then made his way
slowly back to the township.

MATTARO was conscious of
the journey by litter only as
an even, jogging rhythm, occasion-
ally broken. His mind had ceased
to function in the external world.
His body was on fire from head to
toe and he was not responsible for
the parade of images that danced
through the brightlands of his
fiery thoughts.

They placed him in the physi-
cian’s surgery, in a warm bed that
had been quickly installed for the
occasion. They closed and barred
all the windows and lit a great fire
in the hearth, hoping that these
humble precautions would keep
out the deadly bacteria and help to
warm the spaceman's cold body.
But he was aware of none of these
thoughtful ministrations.

The physician readied a seda-
tive and poured a little of it into
the spaceman's mouth. The poor
creature seemed to have lost the
ability to move his lips and his
tongue, so the remainder of the
dense liquid spilled down onto the
bedclothes. But enough found its
way down his tortured throat to
prove effective.

He quickly fell asleep. His
breathing became more regular
and his degree of perspiration
slackened. A nightwatch was kept
by his bedside and they hoped that
his strange fever would abate. But

FALLEN SPACEMAN

171

when morning came they found
him delirious and they were un-
able to reach him.

OTRANGE dreams haunted
^Mattaro’s dying. He saw times
and places and creatures he could
never have imagined, let alone have
remembered. But a part of him
that had not yet been touched by
the deadly fire did remember.

Sometimes he seemed to stand
naked on a rock-strewn landscape
while a savage wind drove a
scouring rain against his bare,
shivering flesh. Another time he
huddled in a cave, his body
wrapped in foul-smelling skins,
and watched the flickering fire-
light in front of him weave eerie
patterns on the walls — walls upon
which were carved unimaginable
things. And outside the hungry
howls of carniverous animals
savaged the night.

He saw suns from an angle he
had never before known: high over-
head in a sky of dazzling blue and
ochre. He felt his feet sink into the
rich, dark soil of a hundred
different worlds. His dying mind
became a riot of landscapes he
had never seen, people he had
never known and worlds he would
never have thought possible. And
still he did not understand.

He was pithecanthropus, homo
sapiens, Jupiter and Zeus; Alexan-
der and Plato, Aristophanes and
Icarus; he was Christ and Mo-

hammed, Freud and Jung, Colum-
bus and Armstrong; Montgomery,
Napoleon — and Hitler. He was ev-
erything and everybody who had
ever lived.

There: in the bottommost rag-
bag of all, the racial memory that
had slumbered untapped until the
Pandora’s box of this world had
opened and swallowed him up.

Now he remembered. In odd,
distorted fragments, all that his
people had ever been and ever
hoped to be. It was all there, had
always been there, but con-
sciously inviolate until now. Un-
til this dreadful dying had been
visited upon him.

His own world seemed very far
away, almost a superimposed
memory— and nothing more. The
fires had eaten most of it away;
only a few tattered remnants clung
to his disintegrated thoughts.

His would-be rescuers watched
over him, bathed his body and did
what they could to ease his pain.
But there was a limit to what their
primitive medicine could accom-
plish and even the reluctant phy-
sician finally had to admit that
his survival was in the hands of
the gods.

By which he meant the space
people.

In the morning the sun rose and
shone brightly through the open
window at the foot of his bed. They
saw no reason to maintain the
useless facade of protection any

172

longer and they thought he would
appreciate the sunlight.

Something seemed to happen.
He opened his eyes and looked out
upon the wonder of this fresh
young world and for the first time
since they had rescued him a small
measure of insanity and recogni-
tion crept into his eyes.

But his brain still burned and the
pain was terminal. Something
beautiful seemed to come across
the sweeping grasslands and over
the river and down toward the
house where he had slumbered.

Something gigantic and hopeful,
a great gull-winged world, dazzling
in the light of its twin attendant
suns. It grew until it filled his mind
and blotted out the terrifying
ancient landscapes.

For a moment he strugged and
sat up, leaning heavily on one weak
elbow. His other hand stretched
out toward the open window and
a wild, glazed look leaped into his
eyes.

“Mother!” he cried.

But the shimmering, golden
world turned suddenly away. The
tiny suns winked out and the daz-
zling silhouette of his home pre-
sented her stern to him, like a
ghostly galleon passing by a
drifting, abandoned seaman. For
perhaps several seconds he re-
mained rigid in that posture, his
eyes fastened upon some deep in-
ternal vision, and then he slumped
back.

“Mother — ” he whispered.

He closed his eyes and saw no
more and several hours later he
was dead.

THE funeral was held the fol-
lowing day. The whole town
turned out for the occasion, each
person bearing mind what he and
she would relate to their children
and their children’s children — how
the town had witnessed the fall of a
spaceman and attended his magni-
ficent funeral.

They made his grave a short dis-
tance from the town, atop a small
rise where the first rays of the
morning sun would warm his cold
ghost, and they declared it to be a
holy place where pilgrims might
draw spiritual sustenence. Every
day thereafter two small children
visited the grave and placed small
floral tributes to the departed
spaceman, and two small trees
were planted so that they might be
nourished by the holy soil; and the
fruit they eventually bore was
known as holy thereafter and was
partaken of on the one day of the
year when the town com-
memorated the fall of the space-
man.

And so the spaceman vanished
into legend. The two small trees
took strong root and flourished
over his grave and their fine silver
branches grew and yearned to-
wards the distant sky. •

FALLEN SPACEMAN

173

Dear Mr. Jakobsson:

As a geneticist , I have followed
with interest your editorials in Gal-
axy and If on “ skintelligence ” and
heartily support your position. I
find it difficult to reconcile the at-
titudes you express in your editor-
ials with the use of phrases such as
“ that's white of you ” and “ indian
giver ’ wA/cA appear in Laumers ’
jfory in the last issue of If.

/ /<?e/ fAa/ ay editor you bear re-
sponsibility for seeing to it that
careless use of phrases derogatory
to certain groups of people does
not occur within your magazines . I
recognize the possibility that it
might be “ in character ’ for cer-
tain story people to speak this way,
but I think that the literary use of
such expressions must be ex-
ceedingly carefully scrutinized. In
the story in question I do not feel
that there was any justification for
such chauvinistic terms. *

With reference to Coney's story in
the same issue, / should like to call
to your attention that geneticists
have dropped the terms “ mongol ”
and “ mongoloid ” nearly a decade
ago as objectionable in their racial
implications. " Downs Syndrome "

is the presently accepted terminol-
ogy, named after the man who
first described the condition.

One of the few advantages of my
participation in the present wave of
professional unemployment is that
I have time to write letters. Who
knows, / might even start writing
science fiction . . .

Selina Bendix, Ph.D.

Berkeley, Cal.

I give myself full freedom to say
what I feel compelled to say in the
space I allot myself in these mag-
azines and sign with the label of my
true descent and natural heritage.
And of course there’s always the
hope that minds will meet.

But I don’t give myself the same
liberties under other people’s by-
lines in the rest of the magazine or
magazines, whose primary func-
tions I see as serving a highly ar-
ticulate and intelligent, specialized
readership. Theoretically — though
the theory has yet to be tested — I
should be able to publish a piece of
fiction diametrically opposed to
my views, provided it were true to
its art and genre. And were not a
lie.

But I agree with your goals, Dr.
Bendix, and am delighted on these
pages to pass your comments on to
readers and authors. Though I feel
that you may have misread
Laumer, whose use of the cliches of
Earth colonialism in the Retief
series is a consistent, satiric and

174

quiet swearing at that colonialism.
And let’s get “Down’s Syndrome”
accepted by the dictionary pub-
lishers.

Dear Mr. Jakobsson :

I think there can be a “ working
definition " of science fiction, and it
could be: A story using some or all
of (l) science, (2) imaginative
theoretical science, (3) fanciful po-
etic license, treating of some as-
pect of life in the real and I or imag-
inary universe, past, present, and /
or future; the proportion of these
determining whether the story is
realistic, speculative or fanciful.

This can be reduced to a logical set
of symbols that are too funda-
mental to be further reduced: +s

-s

Even when there is very little or no
science in science fiction we in-
stinctively use science (or our
knowledge of it) as measure, and
some fantasy seems to suggest
another science that springs from a
hidden aspect of reality; so, even
with the supernatural, can one get
away from the science (or lack of
it) in science fiction and fantasy?

Henry Bitman
Azusa, Cal.

Dear Mr. Jakobsson:

First of all I want to thank you for
the reply I received from you. I see
what a writer meant when he men-
tioned that personal touch a cou-
ple months ago.

I just finished reading Fear No Evil
and Whipping Star the other day. I
know that the one is over a year
old, but to tell the truth this is the
first time I've had a chance to sit
down and read the whole thing.
I've got some issues back in I960
I'm still promising myself I'll read
when I get a chance.

Tm happy to see that Galaxy is
back on a monthly schedule — the
only thing is that with the very poor
distribution in this city, that means
I have to be on the lookout twice as
often. Can you tell me why If gets
better distribution?

But back to the two novels; I think
I was sidetracked. I don’t know
why, but in recent months I ve had
the feeling that every author has
been rushed to conclude his work,
not only in your magazines but
others, too. Maybe Tm being too
critical with this, but Heinleins
ending had the feeling of being
tacked on and Herbert's had a feel-
ing of deus ex machina. What the
novel Dune Messiah had I wont
even say — except to tell you I was
quite disappointed.

However, weak Heinlein, Herbert,
or even T. J. Bass’s little tidbits are
better than a lot of the utter crud
being marketed in paperback for-
mat these days. At least these au-
thors know how to write.

Maybe the only way out is for me
to attempt to submit something to
you, at least then I’d have the right
to complain. There's only one
problem, I don't know if the world

HUE ANDCRY

175

is yet ready for me — or I for it.

John Beck
Youngstown , Ohio

Dear Mr. Jakobsson:

Thank you very much for printing
my letter that requested help in
forming a science fiction group in
Calgary.

A member of the British Columbia
SF Society saw the letter, looked
my name up in the phone direc-
tory, and gave me a call. He gave
me addresses of peoply who would
offer suggestions on how to form a
group. All in all I contacted over 20
but the important thing was the
appearance of the letter in If.
Your assistance was vital in get-
ting things started in Calgary.
Enclosed you will find a brief de-
scription of our first meetings and
how the group developed. I hope to
print a guide to forming SF groups
and will send you copies. The guide
should come in handy if any other
I f readers want to organize.

The next few comments are on If.
I hope you will take them in the
spirit in which they were made,
that of constructive criticism.

When you print a letter, why not
print the full address of the writer?
I would like to contact Sid Krup -
icka about the PROMETHEUS
PROJECT but all I know from the
Jan- Feb 1971 issue is that he lives
in Riverside, California. Do I write
and hope the post office is willing
to hunt through all the Krupicka's
to find Sid? Or will the letter come

back marked Insufficient Ad-
dress? Suppose If gave its ad-
dress as only New York, N.Y.
10017; would this letter have
reached you?

Second point. There is something
about the type face being used that
makes it difficult to read. I have no
trouble reading pocketbooks with
smaller type but there is some
quirk in IF printing that irritates
me. I can't pin it down but that's
what I feel.

Third. I think the illos in If leave
something to be desired, including
the covers. Freas-Finlay - Valigur-
sky seem to draw beautiful and
striking illusions with depth and re-
ality. In comparison the Jan-Feb
cover seems flat and stale. That's
just one opinion of course and I
admit a very biased statistical
sampling.

There are, believe it or not, a few
good words I can write about If.
Reading Room by del Rey is al-
ways excellent and I really enjoyed
that Retief story. The magazine
content is great! Well , so much at
playing critic.

My best regards in '71,
Brian Hval
17 12 Home Road N.W.

Calgary 45 A Iberta
Canada

Correspondents’ complete ad-
dresses will be published in Hue
and Cry only if requested in writ-
ing.

—JAKOBSSON

176

The doctor told me/'Margu erite, you can be alive and ugly#
or beautiful and dead?

The day I first noticed the small pink spot on my
cheek, I had other things on my mind. The New York
papers said, “Marguerite Piazza opens at the Persian
Room". I covered the spot with makeup, walked out
into the spotlight, and forgot it— forgot everything—
in the joy of singing.

It wasn't until the spot began to spread, that I went
to a cancer specialist. The day the doctor told me I'd
have to have radical face surgery, I was sure my career
was over. It was no longer a matter of saving my looks.
Just of saving my life.

They kept the mirrors in my hospital room covered
for a week. And yet today, thanks to the fantastic skill

of the surgeons, I sing in the spotlight again. I let myself
be photographed full-face by a famous photographer
of glamorous women. And I am alive.

So now you know why I am appealing to you on
behalf of the American Cancer Society. To give money.
To get regular checkups. And to pay attention to can-
cer's warning signals.

You know, there's something much worse than find-
ing out you have cancer. And that's not finding out.

American Cancer Society.

We want to wipe out cancer in your lifetime*®

279. Science Fic-
tlon Hall of
Fame I. 26 ‘‘win-
ners.” chosen by
Sci-Fi Writers
of America. Ed.
Robert Silver-
berg. 572 pages.
Pub. ed. $7.95

with trial membership

Print name

What do you thin
would happen

A group of workers controlling all the
^ nation’s transportation decided to strike?

A temperamental child could destroy
anything displeasing him?

A key defense scientist became con-
vinced man was no more than a high-class
bacterium cultured by a superior life form?

Machines created to think like people
developed people emotions?

If these questions intrigue, we invite you to sample
the solutions devised by some of the world’s great
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Broaden your pleasure with the Science Fiction
Book Club. The coupon tells how.

Science Fiction Book Club 22-S95

Dept. 16-FHX, Garden City, N.Y. 11530
Please accept my application for membership and
rush the 3 books whose numbers I have printed
below. Bill me just $1.00 plus shipping and han-
dling for all 3. Each month send me the Club’s
free bulletin ‘‘Things To Come” describing the
two monthly selections and other book bargains.
If I do not wish to receive one of the two monthly
selections, or prefer an alternate or no book at
all, I simply indicate so on the form provided. I
pay only $1.49. plus shipping and handling for
each book I take. (Occasional extra-value selec-
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In the coming year and may resign any' time after
purchasing 4 books.

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Membership will be canceled. I will owe nothing.

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795. Prelude to
Mars by Arthur
C. Clarke. Two
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Sands of Mars
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sci-fi “colossus.”
Pub. ed. $6.75

798. The Last
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Norman Spin-
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608. Ice Crown
by Andre Nor-
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strange colonists
locked in in-
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dread power.
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W. Aldiss. 4
novella gems.
Never before
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Beyond by Poul
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Award winner.
About scientists,
pirates, loners.

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A remarkable
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Five top writers
supply their own
endings for
“After life,
what?” Pub. ed.
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863. Rockets In
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Geoffrey Hoyle.
A spaceship re-
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announcing the
coming of a
deadly peril.
Pub. ed. $4.95

864. The Tear
2666 An Anthol-
ogy edited by
Harry Harrison.
Thirteen com-
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quality of life 30
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355. Future
Shock by Alvin
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for those . . . com-
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Psychology To-
day. Pub. ed.
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The electrifying
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man who dis-
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626. Childhood’s
End by Arthur
C. Clarke. Man-
kind’s last gen-
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“Wildly fantas-
tic! — Atlantic.
Pub. ed. $4.56

618. Dangerous
Visions ed. by
Harlan Ellison.
Anthology of 33
stories never be-
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Sturgeon. An-
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Pub. ed. $6.95

Book Club editions are sometimes reduced in sire, but they are all full-length, hard-cover books you will be proud to add to your permanent library.
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